


Burn Us Together

by 2ns



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Post-Canon, Sexual Content, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 15:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 69,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16746610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ns/pseuds/2ns
Summary: A Stark and a Clegane, back to back against the rest of the world, fighting off the Many Faced God with only their wits, blades, and honor . . .Arya returns to Winterfell a woman grown, but it no longer feels like home.  The Hound arrives soon after with Jon Snow, and Arya finds that he understands her in ways her own family cannot.  Bound to him through loyalty, honor, and blood debt, she decides to ride with the Hound to face the army of the dead.They quickly return to the same comfortable rhythm, but the hardened warrior has found new purpose, and the belligerent child has become a woman of strength and experience.  Arya is reminded that she was never safer than when his blade was at her back, and that makes Sandor Clegane the closest thing to home that she has known for a very long time.  In spite of himself, Sandor begins to realize that Arya is no longer a child, and he sees her for the shrewd, cunning, fearless, and passionate woman she has become.A dangerous mission to save the North and Riverlands from the dead threatens everything they have become to one another, and the Many Faced God is poised to seize one or both of them before Winter ends.





	1. The Measure of Men

Arya stood on the battlements of Winterfell surveying the tundra that was the North.  Countless frigid hours had passed as she kept her watch.  While the wind scoured the flesh from her bones, she told herself that it was her brother, the King of the North, for whom she watched.  Relief, mingled with blackest, gut-twisting shame, swept through her when her eyes fell upon the Hound. 

Arya tore her eyes away from his scowling, scarred face, and she scanned Jon’s other companions.  She pressed her lips tightly together when she noticed Beric Dondarrion and Gendry Waters riding side by side.  If they had made their peace with one another, so be it.  She allowed the debt to slide away, another death relinquished to the hands of the Many Faced God.  There were more important, more urgent, debts to repay.

Arya descended the narrow stair that would lead her into the courtyard.  She concealed herself in the shadows as Jon led his party through the gates.  She fingered the supple flesh of one of her faces beneath her cloak, but discarded the impulse almost immediately.  It would do her little good so long as she was wearing her father’s refashioned brigadine and furs. 

Upon riding into the courtyard, the Hound turned Stranger’s head so that the enormous black charger turned tightly on the spot.  He peered into every shadow, looking intently.  When Sansa hailed him, he grimaced in annoyance and spurred the horse into one more tight circle before dismounting.  He handed his reins over to a stable lad and tossed one last piercing glance around the courtyard before squelching through the sludge towards the Lady of Winterfell, waiting to welcome her guests.

Arya sighed in relief.  There was much to be said between them, but she’d not have it said with all the North listening.  Besides, if he was of a mind to disembowel her, she’d rather he did it in private.

Jon followed Clegane soon after, but not without his own searching glance around the courtyard.  Arya fled before he could spot her.  Jon was her favorite brother, but she wanted to delay their reunion as long as possible.  The sweet girl he sought had had her heart cut out at the feet of Baelor.  All that remained was the killer.  Jon would understand, but she dreaded having to endure his disappointment. 

As happened so often now, Arya withdrew from the society of Winterfell into its margins.  Though it was coming back to life, she spent much of her time lurking in the shadows and listening to the many whispers that echoed through the halls.  This time, her boots carried Arya to the side of the keep where Sansa would have Jon’s companions quartered.  Two tittering chamber maids were backing into the corridor with a basket of linens between them and didn’t notice her approach.

“Did you see the Lady’s guests?”

The older girl tossed a neat bronze braid over her shoulder and smirked.  “Oooh, I did, but they looked a mess, that lot!  One of ‘em only had one eye and another one was big as a tree wi’ half his face burned away.  Horrible!”

The lass beamed up at the older girl.  “Ser Gendry, though, he’s almost as pretty as the king hisself!”

“Wasn’t he just!  Our Jon sure keeps fearsome comp’ny.  Still, men like that, on the road for weeks, gets a girl thinking—“

Arya cleared her throat pointedly, and the maids whipped around and goggled at her, red-faced and pop-eyed.  The younger of the two maids dropped her end of the basket of linens and offered an awkward curtsy, allowing sheets to tumble onto the damp floor.  Arya folded her hands placidly behind her back as she advanced.

“His Grace rides with some of the bravest warriors, some of the very finest men, in all of Westeros.  I’m terribly sorry if they don’t meet your standards, but we expect them to be treated with the same courtesies you would extend to the King of the North himself.”

The younger girl scrambled to pick up the spilled sheets.  “Yes, milady.” 

The older girl dropped a rough curtsy.  “We weren’t seeing you there.  Sorry, miss.”

Arya looked down at them coldly.  “Those men have spent weeks north of the Wall defending your life.  They deserve your respect, no matter who is in earshot . . . or what they look like.”

She looked down sullenly.  “Yes, milady.”

Arya gestured with her chin down the corridor.  “Which room has been set for Clegane?”  The girls looked at one another in confusion.  Arya narrowed her eyes slightly.  Crisply, she elaborated, “The one big as a tree with half his face burned off.”

The younger girl bent to retrieve the linens.  “Please, milady, Lady Sansa said he’d be best off by hisself.  He’ll be in the last room at the end of the hall.”

Arya nodded.  “You’ve already laid his fire?”

A look passed between the girls and the older girl smirked.  “Not yet, milady.  We were leaving him to the last.”  She wrinkled her nose.  “He’s no lord.  He can just—“

Arya smiled dangerously and purred, “It’s Teera, isn’t it?”

The older girl blinked in surprise.  “Yes, milady.”

Arya stepped close enough that she could have counted every freckle on Teera’s snub nose.  When the maid retreated against the wall, Arya closed the distance.  “I understand you have three younger sisters and a brother in the village depending on you for their bread.”  Quietly, she growled, “Do remember Clegane is my particular guest.  From now on, you’ll lay his fire first, change his linens first, and you’ll make sure that his water jug is full of Dornish red.  If anyone asks why, even Lady Sansa, you are to tell them to speak to me about it.  Do you understand?”

The older maid looked askance and curled her lip.  “Lady Sansa won’t like wasting the best wine in the cellar on an old dog like him.  Couldn’t we just—“

Arya tipped her head slightly.  “No.  We couldn’t.  Larsa,” Arya swiveled her head to see the younger girl worrying the corner of a sheet between her fingers, “Teera has apparently lost her interest in training to be a lady’s maid.”  The older girl gasped and clapped her hands over her gaping mouth.  “You’ll fetch Clegane’s wine and a goblet from the kitchen.  If you pay him special mind and look after him for me, I’ll be sure to mention your loyalty to Lady Sansa.”

“Yes, milady, but . . .” she glanced uncertainly at Teera, who was doing her best not to cry, “I’m afraid of him.”

Arya frowned slightly.  “I’ve known Clegane since I was younger than you, and never in my life was I safer than when in his care.  He’ll be kind to you because you’ll remind him of his sister, who died a long time ago.  He won’t trouble you the way some men might, though his manners are crude.”

She leveled a narrow look at Teera.  “I once knew a king who was as pretty as a new-minted coin, tall and golden with eyes that sparkled blue like the sea around Sunspear.  He was so very pretty that our Lady Sansa pined for him and longed to be his little queen.  Well,” Arya shrugged a shoulder and glanced up at the ceiling, “until he commanded Ilyn Payne to take our father’s head off right at Sansa’s feet.”  Arya leveled a dark look at Teera.  “The North makes hard men, and most of them aren’t pretty.  Here, we measure our men by the weight of their honor, the strength of their arms, the number of their good deeds, and the length of their service.  Not by his face.”

Arya dismissed the girls with a curt nod and strolled down the hall towards Clegane’s room.  “Run along, Larsa.”

As Arya closed the door behind her, Larsa whispered to her companion, “Who was that?”

Teera sniffed and answered resentfully, “Some low-born nobody that’s trying to pass herself off as Lady Arya.  Stupid cow’s not even smart enough to know that Arya Stark died in King’s Landing the same day as Lord Stark.”


	2. Silence and Snarling

Arya knelt on the hearth and laid Clegane’s fire.  The man had been sleeping rough for months, and probably hadn’t seen a featherbed since he’d left King’s Landing.  It seemed like the least she could do.  The gods knew he’d shiver all night in his mail before he’d deign to light a fire for the sake of his own comfort.

Once the fire had been laid, Arya pulled a chair into the corner of the room and waited.  When Larsa edged into the room with the wine, she didn’t even notice Arya was there.  Arya had learned many things in the House of Black and White, but nothing more than how to wait, how to fill her mind with nothing so that she could watch and listen and learn properly.  The passage of time ceased to have meaning while she waited, and she lived out entire lives within her own mind.

Arya’s stomach twisted painfully as she considered how Clegane might greet her.  If he didn’t kill her on sight, his familiar snarling would be a welcome respite to the silence within the smoking ruins of Winterfell.

Sansa brooded, Arya watched, and Bran . . . who could tell where Bran was?  There was little of the boy that had once been Brandon Stark left in the Three Eyed Raven.  The entire household mourned the loss of sweet Rickon, and though nothing was said outright, everyone was all too aware of the horrors that had befallen their beloved, porcelain Lady Sansa. 

Arya grimaced.  _Sansa_.  She had turned out to be a pretty piece of work.  Had he not been pissing himself in fear at her feet, Petyr Baelish would have been as proud of his icy, scheming protégé as if she’d been his own daughter true.  Sometimes when she watched Sansa, Arya saw the tooth of the wolf beneath that perfect façade.  Just like Littlefinger, Sansa smiled sweetly, placated every objection from every side, but kept her true thoughts locked up like a bird in a little golden cage.  Arya wondered whether she and her sister had played Littlefinger, or if it was Sansa who had played Baelish and Arya alike. 

Executing Littlefinger in the middle of her father’s hall had endeared Arya to no one.  In one stroke, Arya had eliminated the greatest threat to Sansa’s power, solidified her sister’s authority amongst their bannermen, and portrayed herself as little more than Sansa’s bloodthirsty henchman. 

Most of the northern lords went out of their way to avoid Arya, scandalized by her vulgarity and ruthlessness.  Disguised as a stable boy, invisible as a chargirl, she had heard their whispers.  Unnatural . . . craven . . . rabid . . . unhinged.  Arya snorted in amusement.  Sansa would be beside herself when she realized that there was no possibility whatever that any northern lord in their right mind would wed and bed Arya now.  Arya smirked.  She was virtually worthless to House Stark for building alliances.  No great loss, as far as she was concerned.

When the latch of the door lifted, Arya melted back into the dusky shadows.  The Hound bolted the door and dropped his saddlebags on the floor beside it.  He was thinner than Arya remembered and somehow diminished.  Perhaps it was only that she was not so small.  More likely, she had lost the fear and hatred of him that had enlarged him in her mind.  He approached the table where she’d set out the wine and goblet.  He turned the goblet thoughtfully in his hand but replaced it firmly on the table without filling it.

Clegane pressed his hands into the surface of the table.  “I’m glad you made it home, girl,” he murmured bitterly, “even if I couldn’t bring you the rest of the way.”

“Brienne of Tarth should count herself lucky that she does not owe a life to the Many Faced God.  And to me.”  Arya’s tone was hard.  Brienne’s name was still pitch and gall on her tongue.

Clegane snorted and glanced up, his eyes sparkling with dark mirth.  “That bitch has more honor than brains.  I doubt it has even crossed her mind.”

“Probably not.”  Arya studied his face, more deeply lined and windburned.  “You are well?”

“Aye, as well as can be expected.”  He assessed her critically from beneath heavy brows.  “You’re different.”  He narrowed his eyes as he took in her face.  “How many men have you sent to your Many Faced God since you left me?”

 “The ones that deserved it.  Walder Frey, Meryn Trant, others.  One that didn’t.”  Softly, she concluded, “The Hound . . . but I’m glad to see Sandor Clegane survived.”

He nodded, acknowledging the difference.  “Aye, you killed the Hound, alright.  I can’t say when exactly he died, but I’m still here.  Come here, girl, I have something for you.”

Arya took a step forward but froze when Clegane unbuckled his belt.

He glowered darkly at her.  “You ought to know me better than that by now.” 

She approached cautiously.  Beside his own blade another had been strapped to his belt, and he removed it and held it out to her. 

“When we went back to King’s Landing, I took this from the royal armory in the Red Keep.  The Lannister cunts didn’t deserve it, and I knew he’d have wanted you to have it.”

Arya took the blade and turned it over in her hands.  The hilt was wrapped in red leather with a huge ruby set between golden lion’s paws stretching out to form the crossguard.  She loosed the blade in the locket, and Valyrian steel slithered out.

“Why in seven hells would you bring me a Lannister sword?

Clegane’s eyes smoldered.  “It’s not Lannister steel.  It’s your father’s blade, reforged into two smaller swords.  Jamie Lannister gave one to Brienne of Tarth.  This is the other.”  Darkly, he continued, “If you want both, I’ll get you the other one too.”

Arya shook her head slowly.  “Father’s bones didn’t make it back to the North, but at least his blade did.  I don’t like her much, but if Brienne has pledged her blade to the North, she’ll die defending it.  Let her have the sword for now.  At least it serves the North.”  She glanced up at Clegane.  “How many men did you have to kill to get me this sword?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.  It does not.”  Arya tipped the blade so that the last wisps of twilight and the ruddy glow of the fire skittered across its surface.  The steel seemed to glow faintly red.  Solemnly, Arya sheathed the blade and glanced up at Clegane.  “For this, for the many times you bled for me, I will be forever in your debt.”

Before he could stop her or protest, Arya closed the space between them and wrapped her arms tightly around Clegane.  She was surprised how close they were in height now, her head fitting neatly a few inches beneath his chin.  She remembered now his scent and the warmth that he exuded.  It was still a comfort. 

Arya smiled.  To be honest, he stank to the seven hells.  His brigadine exuded the odors of sweat, horse, wood smoke, and the tang of blood.  It was the same as the night he had borne her away from the Red Wedding beneath a Frey banner.  She had woken within his arms the next morning to the wretched, bitter realization that it was the only place in the world where she was safe.  She’d learned to overlook most of the Hound’s shortcomings, and in the process had glimpsed Sandor Clegane beneath them. 

He patted her back awkwardly and mumbled, “Joffrey named it Widow’s Wail.”

Arya snorted and released Clegane.  “Only cunts name their swords.”

He grinned crookedly back.  “Aye, lots of cunts.  It’s yours, now, my lady.  What will you call it?”

“Don’t do that.”  Arya grimaced sadly at him. “I don’t need a title, and neither does my blade.”  She clutched what remained of her father’s Valyrian steel to her breast.  “Thank you for bringing Ice home, Sandor.  I won’t forget.  Not ever.”

Impulsively, Arya grabbed hold of the strap of Clegane’s gorget and pulled him down to her.  She laid a gentle kiss against his ruined face and released him.  Arya fled the room before he could see her eyes overflow.


	3. Milksop

In the days after the return of the King of the North, Sansa spent much of her days closeted with Jon, discussing the disposition of the North and the threat of the dead.  Jon always invited Arya to join them, and finally one day insisted.  After a half an hour of narrow, resentful glances from Sansa and the disquieting sense that Bran was both there and yet not, she’d become restless.

Almost a third of her life had been spent killing and scraping to survive, and she knew little of the petty intrigues between houses or the art of war.  She knew which end of a blade to put into a man’s gut and little else of the world.  While Sansa postured and quarreled with Jon, Arya tuned them out and drifted closer to Bran, who sat staring fixedly out the window.  In the courtyard below, men trained at the axe, hammer, and sword.  When the wind was right, it carried their grunts and cries through the open window.  Arya’s eye was drawn immediately to Sandor Clegane, his blade locked with the axe of some enormous Wildling in the courtyard.

“He came here for you.”  Bran’s voice was even, distant, and soft.

“Who did?”

 “He died for you once, and he loathes himself for failing you.  He hadn’t really decided to ride north until Brienne of Tarth told him you were here.  He didn’t want to come, but he had to see for himself.”

Clegane succeeded in turning the Wildling’s axe, but the edge sheared down his blade, slid over his gauntlet, and bit into the sleeve of his chain.  The axe came away stained red, and Arya grimaced.  “I’m the one that failed him.”

Bran shook his head slightly and frowned.  “He doesn’t see it that way.  You were becoming.  Blades must be hammered and tempered if they are to be strong enough to withstand the test.”

Bran blinked.  His vision cleared, and he smiled sweetly up at Arya.  For the first time since she had returned to Winterfell, his eyes were bright and clear, looking at her rather than through her.  “I’m sorry for everything that you have endured.  You will be grateful for it one day.”  Bran laid his hand across the puckered and still tender scars that bisected Arya’s belly beneath her tunic.

“Arya?  Bran?  What’s wrong?”

Bran dropped his hand limply into his lap.  When his glance returned to Sansa, he had retreated behind the eyes of the Raven once more.  Distantly, he answered, “Arya hasn’t had the benefit of the Lannister tables nor Lord Baelish’s fine wines to sustain her these many years.  She’s wasted away to bone and sinew.”

Sansa’s eyes narrowed at Bran.  Arya tore her eyes away from Bran and smiled awkwardly, pretending embarrassment.

“Forgive me.  Bran said my stomach was growling—“

Sansa sneered, “You’re hungry?  We’re surrounded with the dead at our back, Cercei Lannister’s lies to our face, infighting all around us, and all you can think of is food?”

“Sansa!”  Jon objected, “That’s not what she said!”

“You can’t imagine how we suffered here.”  Sansa straightened her back and advanced on her sister.  “Robb died.  Our mother died.  Jon died.  They put our septa’s head on a pike beside father’s.  I survived things you can’t begin to comprehend.  Bran suffered.  Even Theon suffered the worst kind of abuse!”  Sansa folded her hands at her waist and sneered at Arya.  “Yet here you stand, barely a scratch on you, complaining of an empty belly.”

Arya balled her fists in the skirt of her brigadine.  It was always the Game of Faces with Sansa now, and she retreated beneath the placid façade that had been her shield in the House of Black and White.  Her belly hadn’t been empty when the waif had been plunging her blade into it . . .

Sansa raked her eyes over Arya and sneered dismissively.  “I’m sure your training,” she scoffed at the word, “was strenuous, but it’s time you grew up and started taking some responsibility for our family and our lands.”

Though seething, Arya grimaced sympathetically, “I’m sorry—“

“Just go.  I thought that you understood what we were facing here.”  Sansa turned her back coldly and strode back to the maps Jon had spread on the table.  She bent over the table and nudged forward one of the ships that was meant to represent Theon’s portion of the Ironborn fleet.  “I thought after Lord Baelish’s trial, you were ready to take up your place as a lady of Winterfell.  You’re still just a child in a woman’s body.”

“You were happy to let this child do your killing for you.  Father taught us to deliver justice with our own hands and our own blades, but you’re too much of a lady for that.”

Sansa’s head snapped up.  “You’ve always been willing to get your hands dirty.  Too dirty.  Our bannermen were disgusted when they saw how much you enjoyed killing Lord Baelish.  Maybe Lord Umber was right.”  She cast a bitter glance over her shoulder.  “You’re just a rabid dog.”  Turning back to the table, she muttered, “You’re no better than the Hound.”

Jon’s face crumpled.  “Sansa!”

Arya’s hand had found its way to the hilt of her dagger.  Jon rose from where he leaned against the table and started inching around the room, but Arya ignored him.  “Spoken like true queen with a true killer at her disposal.  Just like Cersei.”

“Arya!”  Jon choked her name, anguished.

Arya bowed low in the Braavosi way, with one foot extended far behind her.  She wobbled when she rose.  “I trust you’ll let me know if you think of anyone else whose blood you need spilt.”

Arya held her smile rigidly in place and bowed her way out of the door, closing it softly behind her.  When it latched, she braced a hand on the pitted oak and wrapped her arm around the cutting agony in her body.  Beads of sweat had broken out on her forehead.  She pressed her burning face against the door.

“You look like shit, girl.  Haven’t you been eating?”

Arya glanced up to find Sandor Clegane stalking down the corridor.  She tried to summon the acid tone she normally addressed him in, but could only manage a weak, lukewarm aggression.  “After eating your cooking for so long, it’s a wonder I didn’t lose my taste for food altogether.”

Clegane smirked.  “Aye, well, I’m not your damned wet nurse.”  He stopped before her and lifted her chin with a thick finger.  Clegane turned her face from side to side, searching her features.  He frowned and narrowed his eyes in accusation.  “You’ve been here for weeks.  You should have put some flesh on your bones by now.  Is it a gut wound?”

Arya pressed her eyes shut and swallowed hard.  Sagging slightly into his touch, the steely finger beneath her chin was an anchor.  She should have known that if anyone would see through her charade, it would be Clegane.  During their time travelling together, he’d spent nearly every waking minute with her and allowed her to press her bony, shivering back against his at night.  He probably knew her better than her own mother or septa had.

When she didn’t answer, Clegane slapped away the hand clutched to her belly, tore open her brigadine, and lifted the hem of her tunic to see the twisted pink scars beneath.  He hissed between his teeth.  “Seven hells, girl, how many times did they stab you?”

Glancing down the hall, Arya jerked her tunic out of Clegane’s fingers and refastened the front of her brigadine.  She grinned weakly at him.  “Not enough to stop me.”

Clegane grunted with satisfaction.  “Good.  Has the maester had a look?”

Arya shook her head.  “I didn’t want any of them to know.”

“Aye, well, it looks well enough from the outside, but a gut wound like that can fester for weeks before it kills you.”  He took her by the arm firmly and turned her down the corridor.  “He can take a look at it once he’s done stitching my arm up.”

“Let fucking go!”

Clegane lifted one heavy brow.  “You hauled your scrawny ass all the way back to this frozen pile of rubble just to die of a festering gut wound?”

“No—“

Arya tried to pull away, but Clegane gave her arm a little jerk that threatened to dislocate her shoulder.  “Good.  What’s that horse shit you’re always blathering on about your Braavosi god?”

Darkly, she answered, “Valar morghulis.”

He rolled his eyes.  “Not that bit.  The bit about what you tell your Many Faced God when he’s staring you down.”

Arya stopped and gaped at Clegane.  He released her and braced his fists on his hips expectantly.  In her mind, Arya saw Syrio Forel as though he’d stood before her only yesterday, one scarred finger pointed into her face.

_There is only one god, and His name is Death.  And there is only thing we say to death:_

Arya swallowed hard and looked up at Clegane.  “Not today.”

He lowered his face to hers, until they were nearly nose to nose, and growled, “Not.  Fucking.  Today.  Now move.”

* * *

As it turned out, Clegane insisted that the maester tend to her belly first.  He had towered over her, his thick arms crossed and blood dripping onto Maester Wolkom’s floor.  The maester had practically wilted with the enormous warrior glaring daggers at him and growling when Arya winced beneath his probing touch.  After her examination, the maester insisted that Arya take four different concoctions at her meals and aligned them across his bench.  Before Arya could refuse, Clegane swept them up into his own massive paw.

“She’ll take them, maester,” he glowered down at Arya with dark satisfaction, “if I have to hold her down and pour them into her throat myself.  It’s been years since I’ve had the proper opportunity to drown her.”

Maester Wolkom paled and looked alarmed, but Arya rolled her eyes and assured him that she’d take the medicaments.  As a result, Arya found herself seated beside Clegane at the foot of one of the long dining tables drinking her third goblet of wine.  Under his hawkish eye, she even attempted to choke down a bit of roast goat, but she’d had to bolt from the hall to wretch it back up in the corridor.

Arya leaned against the wall, pale, panting, and sweaty.  She pressed her eyes shut in deepest irritation when Clegane’s heavy tread echoed off the floor.

“How long since you’ve been able to eat properly?”

Arya shrugged and smeared sweat and snot across the sleeve of her quilted jacket.  “Since Braavos.”

Clegane leaned low so he could see her face through her lank hair.  “Did your septa not teach you your numbers, girl?  How fucking long?”

She pressed her eyes shut, trying to count, though her head swam.  “Weeks . . . two months . . . three maybe?”

“Too long.”

Arya shrugged and pushed away from the wall.  As she leaned away, the wall and floor followed her.  Arya staggered, but Clegane caught her up beneath shoulders and knees and bore her down the hall.

Weakly, she demanded, “The fuck you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t smash your high-born nose into your own vomit.  It’s no wonder you can’t stand with a belly full of wine and no food.”  He glanced down at her sourly.  “You put anything in your mouth besides the maester’s potions and milksop before I tell you to, and I’ll box your ears.”

Arya’s head lolled against Clegane’s shoulder, and she asked weakly, “What are you going to do?  Feed me yourself?”

He bared his teeth ferally as he grinned down at her.  “If I must.”


	4. Prettier Lies

“Where the fuck you think you’re going?”

“With you.”

Clegane glowered down at her, but Arya pretended not to notice.  She cinched the saddle’s girth tighter and mounted. 

It had taken nearly three weeks of threats and dirty looks, but Clegane had seen to it that the maester’s vile potions slithered down her gullet.  At first, he had held her nose and craned her head back to force her to keep them down.  Once when she spewed the third medicament down his chest, he’d only given her the filthiest possible look before uncorking the first and starting all over again.

“Why the fuck are you doing this?  I left you to die, remember?  You ought to have the decency to let my gut rot in peace.”

Arya coughed and began to heave.  Clegane clapped a hand over her mouth and held her head in a vice grip.

“Maybe I’m healing you up so I can have the pleasure of carving you up myself.” 

Arya clenched her teeth and willed her stomach to accept the maester’s tarry concoction.  She moaned against Clegane’s palm and heaved into her mouth.  Clegane’s hand didn’t budge.  She glared up at him in deepest misery, but he shook his head grimly, the whisper of a grin curling one side of his mouth.

“Swallow.”

When Arya complied, he released her, and she staggered away, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.  “You really are the worst—“

“Worst shit in seven kingdoms.  Aye, so you’ve told me.”

Now that Jon was mustering to ride out against the White Walkers, she’d be damned if she’d be left behind subject to Lady Sansa’s dominion.  She’d take the ice and the dead and Clegane’s foul temper any day over that.

Clegane guided Stranger closer and hissed, “Why?”

Arya turned her horse so she didn’t have to meet his gaze. She shrugged nonchalantly.  “I’ve never seen the Wall.”

“Aye, and you’re not going to see it now.”  Clegane grabbed the gelding’s bridle and pulled its head round so he’d stop dancing around the courtyard and Arya was forced to look him in the face.  “We’re not stopping at the Wall.  We’re riding out to face the White Walkers, and you’re in no fit state to ride, little lone fight.”  He glanced witheringly at the young Northmen scurrying past and lowered his voice.  “Most of us won’t come back.  I probably won’t come back.  I can’t promise I will be able to bring you home safe.”

“I got here safely on my own once.  I can do it again.”

Clegane narrowed his eyes at her and color rose up his neck.  “Oh, aye, a fine job you did.  If I hadn’t drug your stupid ass to the maester, you’d have been coughing up blood within days from a belly full of rotting gut wounds.  The Stranger would have taken you, and you’d be in your tomb next to Rickon.”

He released her horse’s bridle turned away bitterly, but she grabbed the leather strap on his gorget and drug him back.  He glanced from her hand to her face, his eyes smoldering.

They glared at one another for a tense moment until Arya dropped her gaze guiltily.  “If it weren’t for you, I’d have died a long time before I got a knife in the belly.”  She met his eyes again.  “I know you’d have brought me all the way if you could have.  It wasn’t your fault.” 

Something changed in his eyes, and his sneer lost some of its ferocity.  She continued, “We were both safer when we rode together.  I saved you from a knife in the back more than once, and I was a child then.  I’ll do better this time.”  Arya released him and sat up in her saddle.  “If the day comes when just one more blade could have made the difference, I’ll gladly have my blood mingle with yours in the snow to save the North.”

Clegane glanced at Jon, striding through the courtyard and issuing final orders.  “Does he know?”

Arya snorted.  “Jon’s busy being the King of the North, and Sansa reigns as Lady of Winterfell.  No one really believed I was alive until I walked through the gates.  I’m sort of a spare Stark, really.  I won’t be missed.”

 “You’re still a Lady of Winterfell.”

A sly smile curled the corner of her mouth.  “I’m no one.  The White Walkers have snatched a great many deaths back from the one god, and I’m going to help you retrieve them.  Valar dohaeris.” 

Clegane released her horse’s bridle and shook his head.  “You’re a woman grown.  You can decide for yourself, but don’t come on my account.”

* * *

After all the carrying on about the Dothraki hoarde and the Unsullied warriors, Jon didn’t wait for Danerys’s forces to join them.  Instead, he marched them northeast at a blistering pace.  She supposed she should have been more concerned about where they were going and why, but it was sufficient for Arya that they had left Winterfell behind and there was killing to be done ahead. 

Arya and Clegane rode towards the back of the column amongst the Wildlings, so it was days before Jon realized that his sister was in their midst.  When he did find out, he was furious.  He tried persuading Arya to ride and camp with him, but she staunchly insisted on riding with Clegane.  Clegane said nothing, and they returned to the comfortable rhythm she remembered from when they rode together through the Vale and Riverlands.  He tended their horses while Arya made the fire, and it was a rare day when she didn’t take a hare or goose with her bow while they rode. 

Now that she could tolerate eating meat again, Arya felt her strength returning and her spirits rose.  She engaged in her usual bickering with Clegane with zeal, but it lacked the animosity it once had.  Arya was surprised how often she could surprise him into smiling or laughing with her.  She still asked many questions, but they were well thought out and to the point.  Most often, he answered civilly, and as they rode north, she was able to pry much of what had happened to him since they had parted.  In turn, she told him of her time in the House of Black and White.

“You were so hell-bent to get to Braavos.  What did you do when you got there?”

Arya sighed and glanced around.  Most of the camp had settled in early, and aside from a few Wildlings telling stories and drinking several fires away, they appeared to be the only souls still awake.

“I went to the House of Black and White to find Jaqen H’ghar.”

“The fuck’s the House of Black and White?”

 “It’s the temple of the Many Faced God.”  The corner of her lips quirked up.  “There’s a statue of the Stranger there.  It’s dark, and your days are spent tending the dead or ushering the living towards death.  You’d like it.”  Clegane grunted noncommittally and tossed bones from the hare they’d roasted into the fire.  Arya watched them sizzle and crack.  “It’s where I learned to be a Faceless Man.”

Clegane glanced up.  “Mummery and horse shit.  I’ve heard tales about Faceless Men my entire life and never seen one.”

Arya lifted her brows.  “Do you want to?”

Clegane sat back and shrugged.  “Aye.”

Arya rose gracefully from the fire to retrieve the satchel that she kept close at all times.  She’d seen Clegane’s eyes on it more than once, and she knew he was curious, but not so much that he’d pry.  She knelt a few steps into their tent and laid the satchel upon the wolf skins that served for her bedding.

“Come closer.”

Clegane glanced around and repositioned himself so that the flickering light from the fire filtered into the tent, but his bulk shielded its entrance from prying eyes. 

Arya lifted a glass vial to Clegane in salute.  “Valar morghulis.”

After taking a sip of the vial’s contents, she capped it tightly and stowed it inside the satchel.  She glanced at Clegane nervously, praying he’d stay silent when he saw.  Arya drew out her Valyrian blade and quickly sliced around the edges of her face.  Alarmed, Clegane scrambled to her side intending to seize her blade.  Arya held out a hand to forestall him.  The color drained from his face as her blood crawled and itched its way over her features.  Arya selected a face from the satchel, and when she turned again to face Clegane, his eyes went wide and his jaw fell slack.

Arya sat very still for several minutes, watching him study her features.  Sparkling green eyes, freckles, and an upturned nose had replaced her natural born face.  Lustrous flaxen hair tumbled over her shoulders nearly to her waist.  She’d chosen the prettiest of her female faces, knowing that the transformation would create the most dramatic contrast to her dark Northern appearance.  Transfixed, he stroked a blunt finger down her sun-kissed cheek.

His throat was thick when he asked, “Can you feel my touch?”

Arya shrugged.  “I can and I can’t.  It’s as though I feel her feeling it.”

He squinted hard at her before shaking his head in wonder.  “You don’t look like yourself, but I can still see you beneath.  I’d know that smart mouth anywhere.”  When Arya grinned, he did too.  Softly, he continued, “Aye, there you are.”

Arya drew her fingertips over her features, and the second face flowed away like silk to resolve itself into a mask in her hand.  She held the face out to Clegane, and he took it hesitantly.  Holding it gingerly between his enormous hands, he stroked a finger down the bridge of the pert, freckled nose.

“All my life I’ve wanted to change my face.  I’d have gladly killed anyone they wanted if I could have done it.  To know that it could have been done so easily . . .”

Arya wrapped her arms around her legs and gazed into the fire, remembering.  “It wasn’t easy.  They took my sight, broke my bones, beat me bloody more times than I could count, and damn near carved out my guts, but that wasn’t the worst of it.  They wanted me to give up everything I am to become a Faceless Man.  My name, my family, my past, my future, my free will.  Everything I loved . . . all my hate.”  She flicked her eyes up to look at Clegane.  “In the end, it was my list, my hate, that I couldn’t let go of.  I was supposed to learn to be the soulless blade of the Many Faced God, but I failed.”

Distantly, Clegane answered, “I could do that.”

“Changing your face would have changed everything you are.”

Clegane glared at Arya.  “Aye!  Wouldn’t you rather have pretty young boy than a ruined, rabid dog to look at?”

Arya carefully drew the face from between his slack fingers.  “She’s much more beautiful than I am.  Would you like me better if I wore her face?  Exchange the wolf bitch for a southern lady?  Perhaps we can try for a few days—“

“No!”  Arya cocked a brow, and he growled softly.  “No.  I prefer the truth of who you are than a prettier lie.”

Arya put away the face and clasped the satchel.  She stood and looked down at him, her eyes hard.  “So do I.”


	5. Surroundings

As Arya’s strength returned, Clegane began to train Arya in the evenings when the army stopped and made camp.  He’d persuaded her to leave Needle at Winterfell, but her arm needed strengthening if she was to manage her father’s remade Valyrian blade, especially after her illness had sapped much of her strength.  Sometimes a crowd would gather to watch the hardened Hound curse and shame the king’s sister into compliance, and their screaming and squalling at one another had become prime entertainment.  Even Jon would turn up to watch sometimes.

“Damn it, girl!  How many times do I have to tell you that noncing around won’t work?  The wights won’t hold back like I do.  Get that fucking blade up!”

Arya spun her blade from behind her back and slammed it against Clegane’s.  She knew she had no chance whatever of resisting him as he bore down, but she always tried.

“I thought that’s what you were here for—to guard my flank!”

Clegane pressed down on her blade, but he’d not even broken a sweat.  “Aye?  And who will do it when I fall?”

Gritting her teeth, she hissed.  “You won’t fall.  I know you won’t.”

Clegane snorted in derision, and Arya saw her chance.  Relying on her Braavosi speed and footwork, she bent gracefully, guiding his blade past her face and over her head.  She twisted beneath his arm as he recovered and slid around him.

He rounded on her.  “What was that supposed to mean, then?”

Arya shrugged and grinned.  “How many times have you thrown your life before the Many Faced God?”  She charged, and Clegane blocked her easily.  She leaned into his block and their faces were separated by only a few inches of screeching steel.  “How many times has he said, ‘Not today?’”

Clegane pushed her away, and she stumbled, nearly falling flat on the snow.  Gravely, he answered, “Too many.  One day the Stranger will call me, and I’ll have no choice but to follow."

Arya pointed her blade at his face and grinned down its length ferally.  “Not while I draw breath.  The Many Faced God already gave you back to me.  Now he’ll take me before he takes you.”

Arya flourished her blade, and returned it behind her back.  The blade laid against her spine and rose far above her head.  It was really too heavy for water dancing, but she knew with practice, she’d be able to marry her Braavosi style with the Westerosi slashing that Clegane was trying to teach her.  His face darkened.  Arya knew he hated it when she did this, as it left her entire body open to attack.

Arya smiled broadly.  “Enough talk.  If the dead are so fast and strong, then show me!”

When he hesitated, Arya launched herself at Clegane, and this time she used everything she knew.  Her Braavosi footwork, Clegane’s lessons about finding the weaknesses in a man’s armor, and the determination she’d earned in the House of Black and White.  She stopped trying to block his attacks and danced away from and under them.  When his carefully restrained blows failed to land, his strokes became more fluid, harder, faster.  He pressed every advantage, and soon they were both panting with the exertion.

“You’ve been playing with me girl!  Hitting you is like chasing a fly with a hammer!”

Arya’s teeth flashed in amusement as she danced away, not even bothering to parry his lunge at her heart.  “I was well taught!”

“Time for a new lesson, then.”

Too late, Arya realized that he had been playing with her too.  All of her dancing and ducking had left her pinned against an outcropping of stone.  Her eyes went wide, and he smirked when he saw her panic.  She tried to slip past him, but his blade slammed into the stone and sparks flew.

“Not that way.”

He advanced two more steps, and when she tried to outflank him on the other side, his blade blocked her escape again.

“Not that way either.  You’ll have to go through me.  What now, little wolf bitch?”

While Clegane drew his arm back for another crushing blow, Arya drew her knife and darted within his enormous reach, robbing him of his advantage.  She made a wild grab for his gorget and pulled him off balance.  They toppled into the snow.  Clegane dropped his sword and braced his hands in the ice on either side of her head to so he wouldn’t crush her, but Arya clung to him for dear life.  When their eyes met, they froze, panting into one another’s faces.

Clegane glanced down to see Arya’s knife trembling at his throat, and he grinned broadly.  “Aye, that will do it.”

When Arya tore her eyes away from his, she saw that she’d grazed Clegane’s neck in the fall, and blood was trickling down his throat.  She dropped her blade in the snow and wrapped her hand around the cut.  “By the gods, that was too close.”

Clegane rolled off her, but with one hand gripping his gorget and the other wrapped around his throat, she ended up in his arms.  He peeled her hand away from his throat and glanced down dismissively at his blood smeared across her hand.

“It’s only blood, girl.  It’s not the first time you’ve had my blood on your hands, and likely not the last.”

She glanced up at him with wide eyes.  Her hand trembled in his.  “Maybe not, but I’d not have cut you intentionally for the world.”

Clegane shrugged, unconcerned.  “Aye, well.  Men bleed.  It’s what they’re meant for.”  He released her hand and leaned back against the rough stone.  “Remember your lesson.  Be mindful of your surroundings and don’t be caught off guard.”  His mouth softened and he murmured, “You’re likely to find yourself forced off a cliff and killed by the environs as soon as by another man’s sword.”

Arya’s mouth tightened into a snarl.  “I should have killed that bitch.”

“That’s not why I did it.  I’d not have you make the same mistake I did.”  Clegane glanced up over Arya’s shoulder.  “Speaking of our surroundings.”

Arya turned to look over her shoulder to find her brother striding across the snow to them.  She’d forgotten the assembled crowd who now stood silently watching from a distance.  Arya braced herself on Clegane’s shoulder and rose.  She flexed her left shoulder and winced.  A dull fire radiated from her neck through her fingertips from wielding the much heavier blade.

Jon glared at Clegane as he levered himself up on the stone and stood beside Arya.  “Enough training for today.  Arya, a word.”

Arya glared at him as she brushed past.  “Fuck off.  I’m tired and I want out of my armor.  You can have a word at supper.”

“Now!”

Arya turned slowly, and the fire that had risen in her blood from sparring with Clegane turned into acid in her veins.  She felt Clegane draw close, his sword already in his hand.  She glared at Jon with a ferocity fueled by love, bitter with the venom of a sister being commanded by a brother.  “If you’ve something to say, then say it.”

Jon gritted his teeth and glanced resentfully at Clegane.  Obviously, he wanted to speak to her alone, but didn’t want to have to ask for the pleasure.

Clegane took another step closer to Arya and subtly adjusted his stance, squaring himself to Jon.  Arya hmph’ed quietly with grim satisfaction.  A rabid dog Clegane might be, but she’d never had to guess where his loyalty was.  He wasn’t going anywhere.

Levelly, Jon answered, “I’d have you ride with me, camp with me.  There’s been talk—“

“Fuck the talk.  I heard I died in King’s Landing.  Then I heard Lady Arya died at Harrenhall.  Maybe she drowned in the Narrow Sea on the way to Braavos.  Perhaps she drank the strangler and sleeps in the House of Black and White.  Whatever happened to the Lady Arya Stark, she doesn’t need the protection of the King of the North.  I’m no one, and I didn’t ride with you.”  She glanced at Clegane.  “I ride with him.”

With a withering glance, she turned and strode away from her brother.  After a moment’s hesitation, Clegane’s boots crunched after her.

Hurt, Jon murmured, “That’s no way to speak to your king.”

Arya glanced back over her shoulder at Jon.  “Fuck the king.”


	6. Riding With the Rabble

Riding with the Wildlings was both blessing and curse.  Male and female Wildlings marched with the army, and all bristled with blade and bow beneath their furs.  None were scandalized by Arya riding with Clegane, nor with her sharing his tent.  Most importantly, they rode in a disorganized, familiar rabble well back from Jon’s disapproving eye.

Rabble, however, they certainly were.  Individual clans of Free Folk banded together, and relations between each group were constantly in flux.  The only thing they seemed to all agree on was that winter was coming, and it brought death.  Living united them and kept their faces pointed to the north.  For the most part, they left Arya and Clegane to themselves.

Several days into their march, a feud broke out between some Hornfoots and Nightrunners over a missing Nightrunner woman.  They’d learned that it was best not to interfere in skirmishes between clans, so Arya and Clegane guided their horses to the furthest margins of the column, knowing cold, exhaustion, or blades would settle the dispute by nightfall.

Arya’s money was on exhaustion.  Jon was trying to make the most out of the limited daylight, so the army started marching several hours before the sun rose and did not halt to make camp until a couple of hours after the northern light had abandoned them.  In the past day, she’d caught herself dozing in the saddle several times.  On one occassion, she’d have fallen from her horse had Clegane not caught her.

Arya scrubbed at gritty eyes in an effort to rouse herself.  She glanced over at Clegane who sat his horse as erect and taciturn as ever.  He hid it much better than she did, but she knew the cold, boredom, and long days in the saddle were beginning to take its toll on him as well.  Their pleasant snarling at one another had almost ceased entirely.  Clegane had moved them further up the column, nearly to where the last of the northern troops marched.  The Free Folk were unused to such a strenuous movement of their forces, and he was wary of hot tempers amongst them.

As they skirted a thick wood, a woman’s screams pierced the crisp air.  Instantly alert, Arya glanced at Clegane for only a moment before turning her horse and plunging into the wood.  She thought she heard Clegane call her name and curse as she rode away.  Arya grinned.  This interminable march into the icy wind was dead dull, and she was itching to do something besides ride and shiver.

When she found the woman, only a dozen yards into the wood, Arya saw red.  Thin arms and legs writhed and flailed beneath an enormous wildling.  He was rutting viciously into her, an enormous hand braced over her mouth and nose so she could neither breathe nor scream.  Arya’s blade was out, and she’d thrown her leg over her mount before the horse came to a halt.

“Arya!  Wait!”

She heard Clegane’s cry of caution, but Arya’s rage blotted out all reason.  His words seemed to come from a very long distance away.

Unfortunately, the Wildling heard him too.  He thrust into the poor woman a few more times, and grunted loudly when he spilled his seed.  He rose like lighting, brandishing a pair of long bronze blades.  He was huge, a few inches taller than Clegane, with zigzags of decorative scarring running down his cheeks and broad discs of hammered bronze stitched into his furs.  Arya swallowed hard.  It was a Thenn.  She glanced down at the woman at his feet, weakly crawling away to find cover, the snow where she’d lain spattered with blood.

The Thenn grinned salaciously at her.  “There’s still plenty left for you, little spearwife, if that’s what you’ve come for.”

Arya snarled in disgust and took a step towards the Thenn, but before she could go much further, Clegane’s charger barreled into him.  Clegane dropped from the horse, and the Thenn scrambled back into the snow to avoid the tip of his great sword cleaving the crisp air between them.  He rolled over his hip and roared as he charged Clegane, both blades whistling through the air.

It had been years since she’d seen Clegane fight, and while she’d not forgotten his ferocity, she’d forgotten that a man of his size was capable of such exquisite grace when his blood was up.  Faceless Men killed with cold, deliberate intent.  They prized precise, surgical kills.  Clegane slashed at the Thenn as though berserk.

The two men were well matched; too well matched.  She watched helplessly as they charged between the trees, leaping over downed trunks and ducking below branches as they pursued one another through the drifts of deep snow.  She leaned from side to side and crept behind them, hoping to find an opening to aid Clegane.

_Thwack!_

An arrow with a rough black fletching sank into the trunk of a tree, narrowly missing Clegane’s thigh.  Arya whipped her head to the side to see a Thenn archer concealed only yards away.  She charged through the underbrush and slashed viciously at the archer.  He tossed aside his bow and drew a dirk from beneath his furs, but it was too late.  Arya’s blade whipped and swirled around him, and as he backed frantically away from the Valeryian steel, he tripped over a downed log.  She ignored his cry for mercy in the Old Tongue and plunged her blade through one of his hands and deep into his chest.

Their pitched battle had carried Clegane and his Thenn deeper into the wood.  Arya raced through the brush following the distant sound of blades ringing against one another punctuated by grunts of effort and pain.  Cold dread dropped into her stomach when she finally found them.

Clegane had plunged through the rime of a stream crusted with ice, holding off both the first Thenn and a second, smaller man, who was equally eager with his attack.  The water was well over his knees, and she knew that the cold would sap him of his strength in minutes if the contest was not decided soon.

Praying to the Many Faced God beneath her breath, Arya charged after the smaller man.  She sliced through the back of his thighs to the bone.  He fell to his knees with a grunt of pain, and her Valyrian steel sailed through the muscle and sinew of his neck.  When he splashed into the icy water, it was adequate distraction for the bigger Thenn, and Clegane plunged his greatsword into the man’s chest.

“Are you alright?”

Arya gaped at Clegane.  He stood in the icy rushing water with eyes pressed shut and his barrel chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath from the thin, biting air.  Ribbons of blood trailed away into the water from where Clegane stood, and she realized he was bleeding from a dozen places at least.

“Clegane!”

He opened his eyes and regarded her with something between anger and relief.  “Aye,” he snarled, “Go find the woman.”

Clegane put his head down and started slogging towards the slick bank.  Arya waited until his feet were back on solid ground before scrabbling through the ice and brush the way she thought they had come.

The afternoon light was failing, and the forest was becoming a disorienting maze of black tree trunks and dense shadow.  Though she followed the path the fight had torn through the deep snow, it took nearly fifteen minutes before she found her way back to the patch of bloody snow where the Thenn had ravaged the Nightrunner woman.  When Arya finally found her, she was curled into herself against the base of a pine, tears frozen to her lashes.

“Come, it will soon be nightfall.  We’ve got to get you back to your people.”

Softly, she choked in the common tongue, “No.  Broken.”

Arya glanced desperately through the deepening shadows for Clegane, worried he’d be overcome by his injuries and the cold.  The woman continued muttering in the Old Tongue, but Arya ignored her.  Where could he be?

When the woman started sobbing quietly, Arya glanced back down at her.  She was too heavy to carry, and Clegane was nowhere in sight.  Arya alternated between pleading with and threatening the woman, trying to motivate her to stand.  The sky continued to darken, and when snow began to filter through the bare branches above them, still with no sign of Clegane, Arya was done trying to negotiate with the Wildling.

She took the woman under the arm and hauled her roughly to her feet.  She sobbed quietly, and Arya pulled the woman’s arm over her shoulders as she guided her as gently as she could over downed trees and through the brush back to the horses.  Every step was agony for the Wildling.  Arya tried to be patient, though she peered frantically into the dense wood for Clegane every few minutes.  Knowing that the woman would register nothing but the tone of her voice, Arya babbled distractedly to her in a combination of the common tongue, Braavosi, and High Valyrian, hoping that her words would offer her some small comfort and encouragement.

Arya convinced the Wildling to climb onto her horse.  She took the reins of both horses and turned, searching the woods wildly.  The snowfall was thickening, and the woods would soon be plunged into velvety black.

“Clegane!”  Arya peered into the wood, one hand buried in the knee of her charge’s bloodstained furs.  She was afraid to take her eyes from the Wildling lest she fall from the horse.  The woman swayed weakly with the geldings every move.  Panic was starting to flutter deep in her belly, but Arya shoved it aside.  “Sandor!  Sandor Clegane!”

The Wildling woman had ceased her crying for the moment and clung to the saddle.  Though she pitied her, Arya’s more immediate concern was what had happened to Clegane.  She had led him pell mell into the woods, and she’d be damned if she left him here to freeze and bleed to death.

Arya dropped the reins of her own horse and barked, “Stay here!”

The Wildling woman glanced up sharply, her eyes round with pain and fear.  Arya swung her leg over Clegane’s horse and turned his head into the forest.  Stranger snorted and shook his head belligerently.

“Sandor!”  Arya’s throat was shredding across his name.  “San—“

Clegane stumbled into the view, leaning heavily on a staff he’d cut from a sapling.  His pants were frozen stiff and furred with snow, and nearly two inches of snow and ice were crusted around his boots as they slogged through the drifts.  When he glanced up, she noticed his eyes were slightly unfocused and his lips were turning blue.

Arya dismounted and led the horse closer to Clegane.  He leaned heavily on the saddle, and it took him two attempts to mount.  Arya grabbed the saddle, preparing to mount behind him, but he shook her off.

“’m fine.  Ride with the Wildling woman.”  They shared a long look.  A gust of wind lifted Clegane’s long hair, and he sucked in the icy gale.  He blinked several times, and his eyes seemed to focus more sharply on Arya’s face.  “Go on, girl.  I’m no damn use to anybody if I can’t sit my own horse.”

Arya mounted behind the Nightrunner and led them out of the forest, though she looked every few minutes over her shoulder to make sure Clegane was close behind.  Though her passenger’s whimpers sickened her and waves of guilt and regret washed over her, Arya pressed her heels into her horse’s ribs and urged him faster.  She had to choose between a slower pace for the sake of the Wildling woman or getting Clegane to a fire and dry clothes before he succumbed to the cold.  She chose Clegane.


	7. Spearwives

It was well after dark when Arya finally caught up with the army, and she charged straight through the column, searching for the Nightrunners.  Whenever she cast a glance behind herself to check on Clegane, he had fallen further behind.  She looked ahead into the dark, ignoring the surprised faces of Wildlings as they whipped by.  Word of her coming preceded her, and several Nightrunner men met her.  Arya dismounted and helped the Wildling woman slide to the ground into the arms of her kinsmen. 

She grabbed one of the Wildling scouts that reported to Jon.  “Take my horse and ride ahead.  Have the baggage train set up my tent, and I want a fire built when I get there.”  When he scowled down at her, she grabbed the greasy hair straggling out of his fur hood, and pressed the tip of her blade into his throat.  “My brother is the King of the North.  Do as you’re told, or I’ll make sure you and every member of your clan is swinging by your entrails by dawn.”

His scowl deepened, but he nodded his assent and jerked away. 

By the time Clegane’s mount reached her, he was slumped in the saddle and barely conscious.  Arya grabbed his knee and shook him angrily.

“Wake up, damn you!”

Clegane’s ice-crusted lashes fluttered.  “’m awake.  Just finally starting to get warm.”

“Damn it!”

Arya climbed awkwardly onto the horse’s haunches behind Clegane’s saddle and ripped the reins from his numb fingers.

“’m fine,” he slurred.

“Shut the fuck up.  If you get any colder, I’ll have to set you afire to thaw you!”  She shook him hard.  “Wake up, damn you!”

This seemed to pull Clegane out of his stupor.  “Stupid wolf bitch . . . you come close to me with fire, I’ll—“

“Not if you’re dead.”

Arya kicked the horse’s ribs hard and almost slid off the back of its haunches as it jumped forward.  She gripped Clegane tightly around his ribs, both to steady him and to keep herself from falling off.

By the time she reached their tent, the scout stood scowling beside her horse while a pair of Nightrunner spearwives built a roaring fire.  Arya slid off the back of the horse’s haunches and reached for Stranger’s reins as Clegane dismounted.  Clegane’s ice-encrusted boot tangled in the stirrup, and he crashed to the ground. 

Arya found herself pinned beneath his massive, leaden weight, increased exponentially by his wet leathers, weapons, and steel plate.  “Get off!”

For a moment, Clegane neither moved nor spoke, the ruined side of his face pressed into the snow and his hair scattered around his head.  Their faces were very close, but his eyes looked straight through Arya. 

As a child, Old Nan had made her a rag doll dressed in a bit of wolf skin.  It had a snarl of combed black wool for hair and beard, and one of the lads had been convinced to carve a crude sword to be sewn into the little northern knight’s hand.  She’d discarded it immediately, declaring that dolls were for stupid girls, but it had been taken up by Rickon instead.  Little Rickon had carried it with him everywhere, and it had ended up frayed and tattered, smeared with gravy, its filling of carded wool peeking out from the seams.  The last time she remembered seeing it, it had been discarded in the straw of the stable and stepped on by a horse.  For a moment, Clegane was that discarded knight, broken and crumpled in the snow, his insides leaking out and staining the snow. 

Clegane blinked ponderously and reached out icy fingers to lay them across her cheek.  “’s alright, little wolf.  We’re not far from Winterfell now . . . you can manage the rest of the way on your own.”

Clegane sighed a deep breath, closed his eyes, and went very still.

“No!  Sandor!  No!” 

Arya flailed and fought her way from under Clegane’s bulk, screaming his name and pummeling his chest.  Finally the Nightrunner spearwives returned and pulled him off her, dragging him to the side of the roaring fire.  The spearwives were shaking him, trying to wake him again, and his head lolled from side to side. 

Arya scrambled to his side.  “You rotten shit!”  She reached back and slapped him across the face with every ounce of her strength.  “If you die on me now, I’ll leave you here for the wights.”  When Clegane moaned softly but didn’t rouse, she reached back the opposite hand and struck him again.  “Wake the fuck up or I’ll set you and your horse on fire!”  Arya swung her stinging hand back one more time.  “I’ll shove every inch of that Lannister steel up your—“

This time, he caught her hand before the blow could land, though his grip on her wrist was weak.  “’s not Lannister steel,” he mumbled through numb lips, “fucking wolf bitch.”

Arya fell on her knees before him and ripped away his wolf skin coat matted with a sheen of ice.  Her fingers tangled around the clasps of his brigandine as she raced to get it off him.

“Th’ fuck . . . you doing?”

Arya’s eyes blazed.  “Taking you back from the Many Faced God.  Move closer to the fire.”

“No!”

“Now, damn you!” 

Arya glared at him, and he grudgingly scooted close enough to the fire that she could feel its heat searing her cheek.

His enormous brigandine was completely saturated, and she guessed he must have fallen into the water at some point.  Between the steel plates sewn into the garment and the sodden leather, she could barely lift it.  Instead, she stripped it off his shoulders and dropped it at her feet.

“Help me with your mail.”

He grunted and struggled out of the mail, though he followed instructions slowly and lacked any measure of coordination.  By the time she stripped his sopping linen tunic off, he was shivering so hard that his teeth were chattering.  Arya grabbed the wolf pelts she slept in and wrapped them around his bare shoulders, chafing his pale, clammy skin through the furs.

Growling surly beneath her ministrations, Clegane growled, “Leave off!”

“Take your boots off.”  When he made no move to comply, Arya knelt again beside him and attacked the buckles on his greaves.  The icy steel buckles burned her fingers, and if she held on to them for too long, her skin froze to the steel.  By the time the buckles on the first greave were loosed, the tips of her fingers were bleeding.  Arya had to pry the greave away from the layer ice that had welded it to his boot, and she sprawled into the snow when it finally gave way.  She scrambled to his other side and continued tearing at the buckles, when one large, leaden hand fell on her shoulder.

Softly, Clegane said, “Leave off, girl.  The feeling’s already gone in both feet.  I’ll likely lose them to the frost.  You may as well—“

“No!”  Arya glared up at him from beneath the fringe of her sweat-soaked hair.  “If we’re careful, you won’t even lose your toes.  It’s been less than an hour.”

The spearwives looked on skeptically.  One of them pointed adamantly at Arya and gabbled on in the Old Tongue. 

Arya looked up sharply.  “Really?”

The spearwife shrugged nonchalantly and folded her arms across her chest.  Arya nodded irritably and tore off the second greave.  The spearwives had lashed together several staves to create a structure over the fire from which they hung Clegane’s sopping brigadine and tunic.  Arya wrapped her hand around the heel of one of Clegane’s boots, but he jerked his foot away.

“Enough.”

Arya glared up at him.  “After the number of times you saved me from my own stupidity, I’m not going to let you lose your feet or your life to the frost.  Now shut the fuck up and give me your foot!”

Grudgingly, Clegane allowed Arya to pull off both boots and the tattered woolen stockings beneath.  She tossed them blindly to the spearwives who set them near the fire to thaw.  Clegane watched puzzled as Arya clawed open her own brigadine.  Without comment, she pulled her mail and tunic from beneath her sword belt.

“Give me your feet.”

“Why?”

Arya huffed, and grabbing one of Clegane’s ankles, she lifted her tunic and placed the sole of his pale, clammy foot against her belly.  His feet were planks of frozen steel when she pressed them against her flesh.  She squeezed her eyes shut and gasped quietly.  Glancing down, she was relieved that his skin hadn’t yet turned blue.

“Crazy fucking wolf bitch!  What are you doing?”

Arya glanced up, grateful he was alert enough to curse fluently again.  “Saving your feet, you ungrateful shit!  Give me the other one, or I’ll tell her to hit you.”

When he opened his mouth to protest, one of the spearwives struck Clegane against the back of the head with her bow.  Both women launched into loud adamant exclamations in the Old Tongue, gesturing at Arya.  He glared venomously at all three women, but reluctantly offered her his other icy foot, and she placed it beneath her tunic against her skin.

Snow and ice had begun to fall away from the folds of his breeches in sludgy chunks as the fire thawed them.  Arya looked up in inquiry to the spearwives while she chafed his feet through her tunic.  “Like this?”

The older of the two women made a scooping motion with her hand.  Arya pressed her eyes shut and groaned.  She’d been afraid that that was what the answer would be, but if anyone knew how to best thaw a man’s feet, it would be a Wildling.

“What’s wrong?”

Arya grit her teeth together and refused to look at Clegane.  The older spearwife snorted and launched into another tirade, this time berating her for her stupidity and squeamishness.  Unbidden, the sight of him broken and discarded, delirious from fever, pain, and blood loss at the foot of a cliff, tugging on the Stranger’s cloak because he’d defended her yet again, rose before her eyes.  Arya scooted slightly closer to Clegane, leaned forward, and pulled his heels tighter into her belly so that his nearly frozen toes were pressed deep beneath the swells of her full breasts.

“Seven hells, girl!  What are you—“

Arya wrapped both arms around Clegane’s feet and curled her body around them.  She glared him into silence.  When Jon arrived, that’s how he found his sister, her body and every ounce of her warmth wrapped around the Hound’s feet, and the two of them glaring daggers at one another while two Nightrunner spearwives nodded their approval over the proceedings.

When Jon dismounted from his snorting gelding and took in the scene, his mouth fell open, but he said nothing.  The flush that had started to rise up Clegane’s neck deepened and started to enflame his ears.  He tried to reclaim his feet from Arya’s grip, but she tightened her arms around them and the younger spearwife jabbed him hard in the shoulder with her bow in warning.

Clegane glanced up at Jon, both furious and humiliated.  “I’m sorry, your Grace, she—“

Jon cut Clegane off, obviously too embarrassed himself to hear the explanation.  “I heard what happened.  I’ve seen the Wildlings do something similar with men that had been pulled from beneath a snow slide.  These women are sisters to the woman you saved.  Her kinsmen already—“

Clegane’s face darkened.  “I can’t say we saved her, but the fuckers won’t lay their hands on her again.”

Jon nodded.  “You both did well.”  He glanced again at his sister, and she lowered her brow, daring him to comment further.  He cleared his throat.  “Send to me if you require anything.”

Soon after the King of the North remounted his horse and rode away, the spearwives cleared off any other gathered spectators, using tongue or blade as was necessary.  Arya and Clegane continued glaring angrily at one another.  She couldn’t say how long she knelt in the snow beside the fire, but she held her companion’s feet for some time after their body temperatures had equalized.  She refused to release him until the fire of humiliation was nearly banked in his eyes.

“Why are you doing this?”

Arya looked down at the hairy ankles emerging from the hem of her tunic.  “If you can’t stand, you can’t fight.  If you can’t fight . . .” she swallowed thickly, “I know you’ll let the Many Faced God take you again.”  She glanced up.  “You need your feet.”

She loosened her grip and grimaced.  “Is it better?  Can you feel your toes again?”

Clegane narrowed his eyes at her and tightened his mouth into a thin line, obviously considering just precisely where his toes were lodged.  Arya’s face grew hot.  “Aye,” he growled darkly, “if you’ve quite finished . . .”

Arya released him and allowed him to stand and collect his saddle bags so that he could change his sopping clothes.  Someone had sent for a new pair of boots for Clegane, and they sat beside the tent.  Arya watched the fire, trying to give him a few minutes to regain his composure. 

“One of these days, the Stranger is going to stop taunting me and take me for sure, you know.”

Arya gazed over her shoulder at him defiantly as he sat at the mouth of the tent and pulled on the dry boots.  “Not today.”


	8. Mourning

When she laid down on her side of the tent that night, Clegane was unusually quiet.  Long after he’d normally have been snoring, he still shifted and twitched in stony silence.

Arya sighed deeply.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have charged in without you.  It was stupid.”

“Aye, it was stupid.  I thought you were a trained assassin for fuck’s sake!”  Clegane turned away from her.  After a few brooding minutes, he grumbled, “Another piss poor job I’ve done watching over you.  Maybe Thoros was right.  I’m getting too old for this shit.”

Arya could barely make out the shape of Clegane’s shoulder in the dark.  Tentatively, she laid her fingertips on the broad plane of his back, but Clegane jerked away irritably.

“I don’t know how I missed seeing those other two Thenns.  I guess I was distracted.”

Angrily, he turned his head into his shoulder.  “Aye!  The fuck were you doing standing around while I was cutting down that big bastard?”

Arya grimaced into the dark, embarrassed.  Though he knew she’d likely recoil from her touch, she leaned into him and pressed her face into the padded jacket stretched taught between Clegane’s shoulder blades.  He didn’t recoil exactly, but he went very still and rigid.  Into the luxurious warmth of his muscular back, she murmured, “I was watching.”

“The fuck does that mean?”

“It’s been years since I’ve seen you fight.  You’re not as quick as you used to be, but I’d forgotten how good you are.  I just . . .”  Arya groaned in deepest humiliation and pressed her nose against Clegane’s spine.  “I was watching.”

It was several minutes before Clegane answered, but his growl sounded slightly pleased.  “Aye, well, you got the other two in the end.  Faceless Man or not, you’re still a high born lady and shouldn’t have to be carving the guts out of Thenns.  That’s what dogs like me are for.”

“That’s not why I came.”

Mildly, Clegane rumbled, “The fuck are you here for then?”

Arya turned her face and pressed her cheek against his warmth, considering.  When the minutes stretched too long into the cold dark, Clegane snorted derisively and started to pull away.  Impulsively, Arya wrapped an arm around his chest, and he paused.  The silence between them thickened like custard.

“I waited, you know.”  Arya took a deep, shuddering breath before plunging on.  “I waited until nearly sundown the next day before I left you.  I couldn’t move you.  I didn’t know where I could find help.  I was afraid if I did find help, they’d kill you for the bounty or do worse to me for the asking.  By morning, you were burning with fever.  You were delirious . . . you cried out for . . .” 

Clegane’s heart beat wildly beneath her hand, and his breathing was shallow.  “Who?”

Arya screwed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead against Clegane’s back.  “Sometimes you cried out for your mother, but most of the time, you called for me.”

“You should have killed me.”  His voice was ragged.  “You should have slit my fucking throat.  You talked about it often enough.”

Arya stared sightlessly into the dark.  “I couldn’t kill you.  You were the only person I had left.”  She’d never admitted it fully to herself.  To say it out load, and to Clegane of all people, made it real.  She choked back a sob and gulped for air before admitting quietly, “I was so angry with you all the way to Braavos.  I paced back and forth across the deck cursing you for days.  I didn’t know it then, but I guess I was mourning you the only way I could.”

“You’re the only person who’d have missed me.”  He squirmed, embarrassed.

As they laid in the darkness, Clegane’s frame relaxed gradually and his breathing lengthened.  She thought he’d fallen asleep when she murmured, “You’re still the only person I have.”

Clegane turned his head, trying to glimpse her over his shoulder.  “That’s horse shit, girl.  What about your brothers?  Your sister?”

Arya barked out a harsh laugh.  “Every time they look at me, they hope to see the little Lady Arya.  I see how disappointed they are.  Everyone but Bran is frightened of me, and there’s too little of Bran left to be frightened of anything. 

“The only thing I know is my blade in a man’s flesh and the roar of my blood when I’m elbow deep in the killing.  If I survive the winter, I can’t go home and pretend to be a lady like Sansa.”  She laughed bitterly.  “I won’t spread my legs for some soft, fat lord to make an alliance for Jon.”

Arya clung even tighter to Clegane, more to anchor herself than to restrain him.  “You know me for what I am, and you don’t mind it.  You understand that when there’s killing to be done, someone has to do it.”

“Aye, you’re a killer.  I’d not have made you one if the Stranger hadn’t already blackened your soul, but since he did, I can’t say it bothers me much.”

Arya made a fist gently thrust her thumb into Clegane’s chest.  “Right there.  That’s where a man’s heart is.”  Clegane’s breath seemed to catch in his throat, but she continued.  “I’ll always remember.”

He laid his hand over hers and answered thickly, “Aye, that’s where a man’s heart is.”

Arya sighed deeply and relaxed her grip on Clegane, though the weight of his hand kept her fist pressed against his heart.  She barely heard him murmur, “Crazy wolf bitch,” but with a warmth that made Arya smile into the dark.

For all his snarling, she knew she was the only person he had left too.


	9. Hunting

After the incident with the Nightrunner woman, Clegane had insisted they ride not far behind Jon and camp within sight of the King of the North’s tent.  Most of the Wildlings stayed at the rear of the column, but the fucking Thenns seemed to be everywhere.  One in particular seemed to turn up everywhere Arya went.

Clegane glared at the Thenn.  What was his name?  Karrg?  Treyg?  Ugly fucking Wildling with a stupid name.  There were too many to keep them all straight.  He was sure this one, though, had taken a liking to Arya.  When the wind bore her laugh from the armorer’s tent, the Thenn altered his course and made straight for her.

Clegane dropped the fur he’d been huddling beneath into the snow and strode to intercept the Thenn.  He grabbed the man by the arm and turned him forcibly before he reached the tent.

“I wouldn’t.  She’s the King of the North’s sister.”

“Even better.  An excellent alliance, don’t you think?”  The Thenn grinned, baring teeth that had been sharpened to points.  “What’s it to you?  Is she your woman?”

Clegane ground his molars together.  “That’s not your concern, but I’ll put my blade into your belly,” Clegane pressed the tip of his knife deep into the Thenn’s furs, “if I find out you touched her.”

The Thenn grinned wider and answered, “I do love a good hunt,” before shaking Clegane off.

Clegane slid his blade into its sheath and watched the man crunch away into the snow, cursing himself.  The Thenn would be even more determined to have Arya now.

“What’s wrong?”

Arya appeared at his shoulder, fighting with a buckle.  He glanced down and saw that she’d over-tightened the straps of the pauldrons he’d had the armorer make for her, and she could barely flex her shoulders.  He snorted in amusement at the sight of her with her shoulders squeezed nearly up to her ears.  He slapped her fingers away, and loosened the strap.

“That Thenn’s taken a liking to you.” 

Arya grimaced in relief when he’d adjusted the armor properly.  “I don’t like the plate.  It’s too heavy and doesn’t make me any warmer.  I can’t manage it by myself.”

“Maybe not, but the wights are much stronger than a man.  You’ll need it.  There’s a trick to putting it on by yourself, but I’ll help you until you learn.”  He glanced up from the buckle to see the Thenn regarding them speculatively from across the camp.  “It’s not just the wights I’m worried about, either.”

Arya followed Clegane’s gaze, and when she saw the Thenn, he smiled seductively at her and lifted his chin in invitation.  She turned her face away in disgust.  “We kill three Thenns, and now the fuckers are swarming like flies.  Which one is that?”

“I think his name is Treyg.  Watch yourself.  I don’t think he’s used to hearing no.”

“What does he want?”

“What all men want.  You’re not a girl anymore.”

Arya sniffed.  “Let him try.  Surely he heard what we did to the last—“ 

Clegane grabbed her hard enough that she could feel the edges of individual rings of her mail press into her arm.  “No.”  He tossed a glance over his shoulder, but Treyg had gone.  “Just stay away from him.” 

Arya nodded soberly, and Clegane released her.  “Come on.  Let’s find you something to eat.”

Arya stopped at a mess tent and handed him a bowl of some kind of thin stew, though they settled at their own fire to eat.  He glanced up to see a pair of Stark bannermen casting long looks at Arya.  Clegane knew that look.  It was a look of a frozen man miles from the closest willing woman.  He narrowed his eyes, but when one of the bannermen caught his gaze, he made a comment under his breath, and they laughed together suggestively.  One of the men raised his horn cup in salute and grinned crookedly. 

Moving forward in the column meant being under the constant scrutiny of the Stark bannermen and Arya’s kin.  While the Wildlings hadn’t cared in the slightest about the nature of his and Arya’s partnership, the northmen found it to be a source of endless fascination and speculation.  Clegane had heard numerous sly comments that Arya preferred his tent over her brother’s, and they were getting louder.  He’d also heard more than one of Jon’s bannermen speculate about how best to turn the head of the king’s sister, she being so loose as to ride with scum like the Hound.  Clegane ground his teeth together and stifled a growl.  He’d be dead in the lowest of the Seven Hells before he’d let one of this lot lay their hands on her. 

His growl had apparently been more audible than he intended.  Arya glanced up, sucking broth from her thumb and oblivious as usual to the threat of her surroundings.  He looked away pointedly, studying the thin slop in the bowl.

Following his glance, Arya grimaced.  “Who cooked this mess?  It’s disgusting.  We need to try to bag something tomorrow.”  She glanced at the woods around them, silhouetted against the stars.  “Will it be harder to find game as we go north?”

Clegane tossed his empty bowl down and the wooden spoon clattered.  Though it hadn’t been the reason for his growl, he wholeheartedly agreed with her assessment of the stew.  “Yes and no.  The game is plenty enough, but with so many of us travelling together, every animal worth eating will hear and smell us for miles.  It might be worthwhile to try hunting in the morning before the rest of the camp wakes.”

Arya nodded.  “I’ll try tomorrow morning.”

Clegane glanced into the dark past their fire, where the laughter and shuffling of thousands of men filled the dark.  “Wake me before you go.”

Arya leaned back against her saddle bag and assessed Clegane.   “Do you shoot?  I’ve never seen you with a bow.”

“Not since I was a boy.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

Clegane shrugged.  “I don’t have a bow.”

“I can find you one.  One of the Mormont men is nearly as tall as you.  His bow and arrows should serve.”

Clegane grunted.  “If you like.”

* * *

In the middle of the night, Clegane was startled awake by something pressing against his shoulder.  Arya had turned and pressed her face into his furs.  She mumbled quietly, and moments later, icy fingers laced themselves around his arm.  Warily, he lifted his head and saw that she’d rolled out of her own furs and must have laid shivering for some time.  Huffing in annoyance at being disturbed, he pulled her furs back over her, and she settled back into sleep. 

The familiar rhythm of her breath was a comfort, and Clegane was soon drowsy.  As he dropped back into an uneasy sleep, he mused at the irony that the only female who’d deign to clutch his arm in the night was a nuisance of a Stark girl half his age.  He’d damn near died a dozen times trying to protect her, but somehow, he still couldn’t let her go.  A quiet voice from the back of his mind reminded him that she wasn’t a girl any longer, but he pushed it away savagely. 

She stirred and lifted her head.  “Sandor?”

“Aye, little wolf.  I’m here.  Go back to sleep.” 

A shudder ran through her.  “Gods, it’s cold tonight.  How do you stand it?”

Clegane shrugged.  “Habit.  Come here.”  He lifted his furs and Arya scooted closer.  She sighed with relief when she resettled herself within his warmth.  “Better?”

“Mmm hmm.”

Arya yawned and snuggled deeper into his side.  Even beneath her mail, he couldn’t ignore the soft, warm, womanly curves that pressed against his side and hip.  Seven hells!

His throat thick, Clegane commented, “It’s only going to get colder, little wolf.  The king’s tent is heated with braziers . . .”  He hesitated but plunged on, “perhaps you’d be more comfortable quartering with your brother.”

Arya wrinkled her nose.  “I’ll freeze before I give him the satisfaction.”  She yawned broadly.  “I rode with you.  I’ll stay with you.”  More awake, she lifted her head and glanced up at Clegane, squinting at him in the dark.  “Do you tire of me?”

Clegane snorted and pressed her head back down against his shoulder.  “Aye, you’re a bitch and a bother, but you’re a good little hunter and you’re the only other person Stranger will abide.”  Arya laughed quietly, and her breath tickled his neck.  She stretched her arm out across his waist, and he laid his own on top of it, clasping her elbow.  “You’re the only thing of value I’ve got, and the only person I’d trust at my back.  I’ll not let you ride away quite yet.”

“Good.”  The satisfaction in her voice warmed him more than he wanted to admit.  “Shut the fuck up then and let me get some sleep.”

In the morning, Arya nudged him awake with the end of a purloined bow, and he followed her out into the crisp dark.  He was reluctant to admit it, but he’d slept deeper, rose easier this morning, probably due to their shared warmth.  They crept together through the dark, and Arya shot him nasty glances and shushed him several times.  He glared at her.  Clegane hadn’t hunted since he had been a boy, and he’d grown nearly two feet since then.  He wasn’t as stealthy as he had once been.

As the moon set, Clegane found himself watching Arya more than the wood.  At first, it had been difficult to reconcile the wild pup he had drug through the Riverlands with the dark, brooding woman that now wore her face.  He’d grown fond of her then, in spite of her arrogance, foul temper, and filthy mouth.  She was still arrogant, foul tempered, and her tongue could flay the skin right off his back, but she was more.

Clegane was so distracted, he didn’t see the young buck until Arya’s arrow flew.  They tracked him through the wood, and after Arya dressed and bled him, Clegane hoisted the beast, steaming in the cold, onto his shoulders. 

“Now I see why you brought me.  You just wanted me to carry your kill back to camp.”

Arya beamed up at him.  “I like the company.  Jon and Robb would take me hunting sometimes without father knowing.  It’s been years since I’ve had a hunting partner.”  She sneered good-naturedly at him.  “You’re a noisy fucker though.  That buck must be half deaf.”

When Arya and Clegane returned to camp, the Momont archer’s eyes nearly popped from his head to see his bow clutched in Clegane’s fist.  He gaped at them in disbelief but was loath to ask for it back.

Arya grinned at the men huddling around their fire with only stale journey bread clutched in their fists.  “Hungry?  My friend here,” Clegane cocked a brow in surprise when she indicated him with a vague wave of her bow, “would like to trade half our kill for your bow and quiver.”

The bowman shrugged.  “I’ve another bow; you’re welcome to that one.”  Grinning up at Clegane, he continued, “Keep bringing me breakfast, and you can have all the arrows you want!”

Clegane dropped the carcass at the archer’s feet and glowered at him.  “Don’t get your hopes up.”


	10. Breakfast

Clegane swam to consciousness through a warm haze.  As they neared Eastwatch, Jon had pushed the army to reach the fortress before winter could unleash its rage.  They’d ridden hard for days, and Arya had had to rouse him to send him to bed the previous night, as he had fallen asleep before the fire.  It was still a few hours before the dawn, and it took him a few minutes to realize what had awakened him.

Arya had continued to share his furs and her warmth, her arm wrapped around his chest or his waist.  Most nights she stayed right there until morning.  This morning, though, her face was pressed into his neck, and one of her hands had found its way between his mail and his tunic.  In her sleep, she’d hooked one of her slender legs around his. 

Clegane didn’t dare move lest he wake Arya.  Frankly, he couldn’t imagine how he was going to extricate himself from her grip with any sense of decorum.  He was more aware than ever of her invitingly soft body pressed against him, and her breath tickled his neck.  Arya murmured, and her hand slid down his belly.  In spite of himself, he was horrified to feel his desire stir.  He snatched at her wrist before her hand could drift any further.

“Ow!  What’s wrong?”

“Shut the fuck up or you’ll wake the whole camp!”

Arya came awake in an instant.  She looked down at Clegane, and her breath hitched, realizing that in her sleep, she’d practically twined herself around him.

He pressed his eyes shut and hissed, “If you’d be so kind to . . .”

“Yes, of course!”

Clegane released Arya’s wrist, and as she unhooked her thigh from around his, she unintentionally slid against his tightening desire.  Most unhelpfully, she froze.

“Are you—“

“No.”

“But—“

Angrily, he growled, “Yes, damn it!  I woke up with a pretty woman wrapped around me!  What do you expect to happen?”

Slowly, cautiously, Arya unwound herself from around Clegane.  “It’s not my—“

Clegane turned his back to her.  Hotly, he spat, “I know that.”

Arya laid back down behind him, close enough to share his warmth but not near enough to touch him.  They laid for an eternity in silence.  Finally he rose and took up his bow and quiver.  As he passed, she caught the strap of the quiver.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to.”

He stooped and ran his hand over her disheveled hair in an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture.  “I know, little wolf.  Go back to sleep and I’ll fetch back some breakfast.”

* * *

Arya hadn’t slept well after Clegane had left, and she’d laid huddled under their furs wondering what in Seven Hells she was going to say to him when he got back.  Arya flipped open one of Clegane’s saddle bags and pulled out a skin of sour wine and took a long drink, hoping it would clear her head.  She capped the skin and stepped out of the tent to find a hulking shadow crouched over the coals from the previous night’s fire warming its hands.  At first she assumed it was Clegane, but when the shadow lifted its head, it materialized into the Thenn.  He smiled slowly when their eyes met.

“Where’s your big friend?”

Arya narrowed her eyes.  “Hunting.”

“Me too.  Come to our fire; I’ll make sure you don’t go wanting.”

“No thanks.”

When he moved, it was like a mountain cat, lithe, almost a pounce.  He towered over her and brought his face low into hers.  “I insist.”

Arya’s hand went to her waist before she realized that she’d been so distracted this morning that she’d not thought to strap on her sword belt.  Her eyes flew wide when she realized she was unarmed.

The Thenn narrowed his eyes.  “Of course, we could stay here if you prefer.”

He must have seen it in her eyes the moment she decided to turn for her weapons.  Before she could duck into the tent, he pushed her hard and was on her.  He kept one hand clamped over her mouth while he tore at her clothes with the other.  He pushed her hauberk up around her throat, and the weight of the chain choked her.  She bucked and kicked, clawing at his arms and trying to stop his hands as they stripped her bare.  She twisted beneath his massive weight in hopes of squirming closer to where her sword belt laid tangled somewhere beneath the furs.

“Go ahead and fight.  When I’m done, you’ll be mine, and the north will belong to Wildlings for the rest of time.”

Arya screamed against Treyg’s palm as he loosened the ties on his pants.  Suddenly, the flap of the tent flew open, and Clegane’s great sword cleft the Thenn in two, splattering blood and gore across Arya’s bared skin.  She kicked herself out from under him and tried to pull her clothes back together.

Clegane stepped over Treyg’s shuddering corpse and knelt beside Arya, gathering her to him. Burning with shame and shuddering with fear, she coiled into a ball within the sanctuary of his strong arms.  Many times, she’d been threatened with rape, but never had she come so close. 

Clegane tore off his gloves and gently probed Arya’s face and arms in the near dark, looking for injury.  “Are you hurt?  Did he—“

“No.  No, not yet, but he would have done if you hadn’t come back.”  She pressed her face into Clegane’s neck and sucked in his familiar scent, drawing comfort from his nearness.  “Thank the gods you came back.”

Clegane wrapped his cloak around her.  “Get dressed.  I’ll be right back.”

Clegane rose, but Arya clutched at his fingers.  Still deeply shaken, she was reluctant to let him go quite yet.  “Where are you going?”

Clegane glared at the dead man soaking their furs with his blood in the middle of the tent.  “I’m going to kill every fucking Thenn in Jon Snow’s army.”

Clegane turned to go, but Arya held him.  “Not yet.  Don’t leave without me.  Jon needs to see what they’ve done.”

Stiffly, he nodded and turned his back while she wriggled out of the ripped and bloodstained clothes.  She tossed her hauberk at his feet.  “See if you can get the blood out of my mail.  I don’t think I can stand to have the stench from a fucking Thenn on me for the rest of winter.”

Arya dressed quickly, pulling on her brigandine over a padded jacket since she wouldn’t be able to put her hauberk back on before it was thoroughly dried.  Through the flap of the tent, she could see Clegane rubbing snow into the mail, and his hands trembled with his rage.

Arya grabbed one of Treyg’s heavily muscled arms and hauled his seeping torso out of the tent, his entrails dragging behind.

Clegane glanced up darkly.  “I’ll get the rest.”

Though the camp had started to rouse with dawn, silence descended and spread throughout the camp as Arya and Clegane drug their respective halves of Treyg, a trail of blood and offal being spread behind them.  It was sheerest luck that they met the King of the North before they reached the Thenn camp.

“What in the name of the gods have the two of you done?”

Arya looked up darkly at her brother.  She was panting and sweating heavily from the effort of dragging Treyg through camp and didn’t have the breath to respond.

Clegane answered for her.  “Taking breakfast to the Thenns.”

Jon goggled.  “Stop!  You’ve murdered one of their chiefs!  You can’t just—“

Clegane ripped his sword from its scabbard and rounded on Jon.  He drug Treyg around so that his still erect cock flopped into plain view.  “Murder?  I cut through a filthy Thenn before he could rape your sister.  Now, I’m going to kill every fucking Thenn in this army in restitution for what he nearly did to Arya.”

“We.”  Arya glared around at the assembled men.

“Aye, we.”  Clegane shrugged angrily at the concession.  “Your sister feels entitled to do her own share of the killing.”

No doubt drawn by the commotion, the remaining three Thenn chieftains fought their way through the crowd.  One of them took in the two halves of Treyg, one at Arya’s feet and the other at Clegane’s, and he smirked darkly.

“If anyone deserves restitution, it’s us.  You’ve deprived us of our war chief.”  He flicked pale grey eyes up to Clegane.  “If you’d done a better job pleasing your woman, she’d not have gone sniffing after Treyg.”

Arya’s blade was out and pressed into the fleshy underside of the man’s chin before anyone could stop her.  A thick ribbon of blood trickled down his throat.  

“What’s the punishment in Thenn Valley when one man rapes another man’s woman?”

Reluctantly the shortest of the three Thenns answered, “Twice the woman’s weight in bronze and pelts.”

Arya’s eyes flashed.  “And what if the woman is a member of the Magnar’s own family?”

The Thenn glanced uncomfortably at Jon Snow and recognition dawned as he registered their likeness.  “Death.”

Arya pressed her blade deeper, and the Thenn grunted.  “How many deaths?”

The chieftain drew himself up straighter.  “One for every finger on her hand.”

Arya twisted her blade subtly, and the blood trickled more freely.  He gasped quietly.  “Shall we call our debts even, or shall Clegane and I continue killing Thenns?”

“We will consider justice served.”

Arya nodded curtly and withdrew her blade. 

The bleeding chieftain lowered his head slowly and smiled wolfishly at Arya.  The Thenns shared several words in the Old Tongue and laughed.  Arya sneered, and she responded coldly in the same language.  Shocked, they retreated with a snarl, dragging Treyg with them.

Jon watched them go.  “What did they say?”

Arya plunged her blade into a snow bank to clean it.  “He said he saw what Treyg liked about me.  He said he’d have offered ten times the wolf bitch’s weight in bronze if he’d known I had such a bite.”

“Where did you learn the Old Tongue?”

Arya glared at her brother.  “The same place I learned the Thenn laws . . . inside the face of the Thenn.”


	11. Hard Truths

Arya sheathed her blade and strode back to their tent.  After a final glare at Jon, Clegane followed her.

Once they were out of earshot of the other men, he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.  “Why?”

Arya glanced up at him.  “Why what?”

Clegane snorted.  “Why did you stop me?”

Arya turned her face away.  “You’re worth a hundred Thenns.  I’d not see your life wasted on defending my honor.”

Quietly, he asked, “Why didn’t you correct him when he said you were my woman?”

She stopped and looked hard at Clegane, and this time he turned his face away, hiding the scarred remnants of his melted flesh from her sight.  Arya laid her hand against his puckered and ruined cheek and turned his face so he would be forced to look at her.  Clegane had set his jaw like stone, and his eyes were impassive, but he didn’t stop her.  She stroked a thumb over his skin.

“Let them think what they want; they will anyway.  It’s not their concern why I ride with you and share your tent.”

Clegane frowned deeply and glared at her.  “Why do you ride with me?”

Arya let her hand slide from his face and instead gripped the strap that held his gorget in place.  She watched her fingers toy with the buckle.  “I enjoy your company, even when you snarl at me and tell me I’m stupid.  I’d rather kill with you than warm another man’s bed.”

He couldn’t meet her eyes when he asked, “Why do you share my tent?”

“Because . . . it’s the safest place in the Seven Kingdoms.”

Arya walked away from Clegane, but he didn’t follow.  She felt his eyes on her back like hot coals. 

Arya burned her ruined clothes and their fur bedding, matted with the Thenn’s blood, that morning before the army had struck camp.  She didn’t want to admit it, but it was partially to burn away the memory of the near rape, partially an excuse to wait for her companion to return.  When the rest of the camp had been struck and the Stark bannermen were forming into rough ranks, she kicked snow into the guttering flames, mounted her horse, and turned his nose north. 

Clegane had still not reappeared by midday, so Arya questioned a few of Jon’s men.  One of the Umbers informed her that Clegane had volunteered to scout for Jon.  Arya had nodded and turned away, annoyed that Clegane had decided he needed a good brood after what had happened that morning.  She endured the stares of the Northmen and resentment of the Wildlings alone as they rode.  No one spoke to her for much of the day, and she soon missed Clegane’s dour glares and snide comments.  By evening, she felt his absence keenly and had started to look for him in the face of every tall man that passed.

Clegane was like an onion, and she supposed she was much the same.  It was a delicate dance, peeling back the thick veneer of aggression he lurked behind to get at the broken man beneath.  She knew from experience that any time their conversation pierced that skin too deeply, he’d brood for hours before returning to his usual manner, but every time, he uncoiled subtly. 

For her part, Arya had revealed things to him that she’d barely admitted to herself.  Afterwards, she always felt naked and exposed for the telling, but somehow comforted by the communion.  When Arya spoke from her own personal darkness, it was never met with his usual derision.  Though he’d rarely mention these confidences again, she knew that Clegane kept them nestled deep and safe amongst the shambles of his own brokenness.

Clegane didn’t return that night.  While she sat brooding beside the fire, she heard a rustling and looked up eagerly.  Instead of Clegane, a Thenn woman emerged from the dark, bearing a foot-high stack of the finest wolf pelts Arya had ever seen.  She glared at Arya and growled, “Payment,” before dropping them at her side and melting back into the dark. 

As she combed her fingers through the astoundingly soft, long fur, something about the pelts seemed familiar, and she realized that each one had been folded over several times.  Finally, she realized that she’d been given nearly a dozen direwolf pelts.  Unfolding the top one, she realized Clegane could have easily wrapped himself in it.  If he was here.  Angrily, she tossed the furs inside the tent and resumed her brooding beside the fire.

Although she was distantly grateful for the furs, a more than adequate replacement for her lost bedding, she was bitterly disappointed that it was another fucking Thenn rather than Sandor Clegane who had appeared at her fire.  She didn’t know where he had gone.  She didn’t understand why he had left.  She didn’t understand why it cut so deeply that he was gone. 

When she could no longer hold her eyes open, she retreated into the tent.  She eventually fell asleep with her face pressed deep into the musky, northern odor of the furs, though she shivered convulsively without Clegane’s warmth.  Ice crystals formed on her lashes.

* * *

Two more days passed with no sign of Clegane, and Arya finally could bear it no longer.  Fear or anger or resentment or rage or something else had been building steadily beneath her ribs, and it felt as though the bones would crack if she had to wait any longer for answers.   On the morning of the fourth day, she was waiting in Jon’s tent when he woke. 

Arya had pulled a chair to the side of his cot and barely waited for his eyes to flutter open before she demanded, “Where is Sandor Clegane?”

Jon squinted at her in surprise before sitting up and scrubbing his face with his hands.  He peered at her warily from beneath his unkempt raven curls.

“I’ve sent him scouting for an advance report from Eastwatch.  We’ve had no ravens for nearly a week.  Didn’t he tell you?”

“No.”  Arya’s lips twisted bitterly around the word.  She glared into a brazier, ignoring her brother while he rose, pulled a padded jacket on over his tunic, and poured himself a glass of wine.  After weeks in the cold, the heated tent was stifling, and the closeness only served to enflame her sudden anger at Clegane.  “When did you tell him to go?”

“Right before the nasty business with that Thenn.  Perhaps he forgot to tell you with all that happened.”

“He doesn’t forget anything,” she snarled.  “In the Red Keep, his place was to see and remember everything but repeat nothing, to do his master’s bidding without question.  Like a dog.”

She allowed her eyes to slide out of focus as she watched the flames dance, and something Jon said dropped into place.  “When did you speak to him?”

Jon looked down at her with deep concern.  “I caught him early in the morning.  He had a bow in his hand as though he was heading out—“

“Heading out to hunt.”  Arya groaned and dropped her face into her hands. 

Clegane had come back to tell her he had to leave, and found the Thenn about to rape her . . . and then she’d told him that being with him was the safest place in the seven kingdoms.  No doubt Clegane decided the best way to keep her safe was to leave her behind.

“Are you alright?”

Arya looked up at her brother and nodded curtly.  “When do you expect him back?”

Jon shifted uncomfortably, examining the depths of his wine cup with great interest.  “He should have been back yesterday.  I was surprised that you didn’t go with him . . . I thought the two of you had had some kind of disagreement.”  Jon looked up nervously.  “Over the Thenn, perhaps?”

Arya stood, nearly kicking over the brazier as she turned towards the flap of the tent.  “Seven bloody fucking hells!  Stupid cunt.  If he’s not dead, I’ll kill him myself.”

She strode across the camp, muttering under her breath with every step, towards the long tent that served for a makeshift stable for the Stark horses. 

“Arya!  Wait!  Where are you going?”  Jon’s voice, and soon his boots, crunching in the snow, trailed behind her.  Breathless, he caught up and made a wild grab for her furs, swinging her around to face him.

She glared at him before glancing down and frowning.  “Your boots are on the wrong feet.”

Jon ignored her.  “Where are you going?  He could be anywhere between here and Eastwatch!  Surely you’re not going to ride out to find him?”

One of the young stable lads jogged up to Arya, her gelding in tow.  He’d evidently seen her coming in a blazing temper and had hastily saddled her horse.  Arya jerked the reins from his hand and nodded her thanks.

She rounded on Jon.  “Yes, damn it, I’m going to go find him!  He’s my—“ Jon’s eyebrows shot up expectantly, and Arya broke off, flustered.  She wasn’t quite sure what she’d intended to say.

Darkly, Jon asked, “He’s your what, exactly?”

“I’m going.”  Arya narrowed her eyes dangerously at Jon.  “You should have told me before now—“

“Girl!  There’s no need for all that.”

Arya turned to find Clegane limping towards them through the camp and leading his horse.  He looked windswept but otherwise fine, though the horse was favoring one of its hind legs.  With a withering glance at Jon, she turned on her heel and closed the distance between herself and Clegane.  She was still deciding if she was planning to draw her blade or simply strike him when she found her face pressed into his furs and her arms wrapped around him.

Clegane’s arm came around her, and he patted her shoulder perfunctorily.  Driven mostly by anger but also something more primal she couldn’t explain, Arya grabbed hold of his gorget and pulled him down to her.  She kissed him hard, she kissed him deeply, and when he overcame his surprise and returned her kiss, pulling her closer against his body, she bit him hard enough on the bottom lip to draw blood.  Clegane grunted in pain, and Arya released him.  She whipped her hand back to strike him, but he caught her hand, smearing the blood away from his lip with his other fist. 

Arya glared hotly at him, and he returned her look with particular intensity.  “The fuck was that for?”

From the corner of her eye, Arya could see that men had stopped and were gaping openly at the spectacle.  Beneath her breath, she growled, “Where the fuck have you been?”

Clegane glanced wildly at Jon.  “Your brother just told you and everyone in the damn camp that he sent me to Eastwatch.  It’s not my fault you just now noticed I was gone!”

Arya tried to wrench her hand from Clegane’s iron grip.  “I’ve known you were gone for days!  If I’d have known he was sending you to Eastwatch, I’d have gone with you.”

Clegane glanced around at the gathering crowd.  He loosened his crushing grip on Arya’s wrist and pulled her closer so he could speak to her with some semblance of privacy.  “Aye?  And what would you have done on the road to Eastwatch?”  He lowered his face closer to hers and dropped his voice to a soft growl.  “You were safer here.”

Some of the fire was fading from Arya’s blood, but she wasn’t yet ready to relent.  Belligerently, she spat, “I’d have guarded your back.” 

Clegane brought his face still closer.  “Aye?”

Arya swallowed thickly.  “I’d have kept you warm.”

“Aye, I’m already warmer, being back.”  He searched her eyes and tightened his lips.  “Burning, in fact.”

Clegane brushed the back of his fingers across Arya’s cheek.  Still furious but grudgingly relieved that he’d returned, Arya clenched her jaw and dropped her eyes.  When he opened his hand over her cheek, she closed her eyes and pressed her face into his palm.  Strong, icy fingers lifted Arya’s chin, and Clegane gently pressed his lips to hers.  He released her wrist when he broke their kiss.  Arya could taste his blood in her mouth. 

Softly, he rumbled, “I need to make a report to his Grace, and then I’ll come find you.”  He searched her eyes.  “Aye?”

Arya nodded and turned away.  Before she could take more than a few steps, Clegane caught up her hand and pulled her back.  With a glance at Jon, he murmured, “When I do . . . I’d like to hear what you would have said.”

Something cold and writhing dropped into Arya’s belly.  “About what?”

“About what I am to you.”

Clegane released her hand and trudged off with Jon, but as he went, he cast a last, lingering look over his shoulder at her.


	12. Home

Arya had already eaten and was nearly ready to retire for the night when Clegane finally made his way to their fire.  He was plainly exhausted, though Arya thought his eyes brightened when he saw her.  Whatever Clegane had seen in Eastwatch must have been significant, because the army didn’t move that day.  The King of the North had been sequestered with his advisors, apparently including Clegane.  Arya knew she’d have been welcome amongst them, but she’d stayed away nonetheless.  She glanced at Clegane and away quickly.

Finally, she ventured, “How was scouting?”

Clegane grunted and knelt beside her, warming his hands at the fire.  “Quiet.  Cold.”  Without looking at her, he concluded softly, “Lonely.”  He glanced up at her.  “The army of the dead is on the march, and has breached the wall.  We haven’t moved because we need to find where they’ve gone and coordinate our forces with the dragon queen’s.”

Arya nodded her head and continued staring into the flames.

Finally, he asked roughly, “Are you alright?  After . . . well, after.  You don’t seem like yourself.”

Arya swallowed hard and nodded.  “Of course.”

Darkly, he muttered, “I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

She shot him a venomous glance.  “Which time?  When you went hunting, or when you went scouting?”

“Both.  Neither.  I don’t know.”  Clegane pressed his thumb and forefinger deep into his eye sockets, trying to smudge away his exhaustion.  “I’d never have forgiven myself if that fucking Thenn had hurt you.  I’d have died trying to kill every last one of them.”

Clegane glared defiantly at Arya when he continued, “I’m not sorry I didn’t take you to Eastwatch, though.  I didn’t know what I’d find there, and there was a good chance I wouldn’t come back.  I was going to tell you, but with what happened that night and what you said after the Thenn . . .”  He trailed off and stared into the fire moodily.

Stonily, Arya commented, “You could have said goodbye.  You could have told me where you were going.”

“There wouldn’t have been a goodbye.  You would have insisted on going with me, and I didn’t want to risk taking you.”  He glanced at her.  “I didn’t want to say goodbye.”

They watched the fire diminish in silence for nearly an hour, and when her eyes refused to stay open, she rose to retire.  Arya paused behind Clegane, wanting to say something, but not sure what.  She settled for squeezing his shoulder as she passed.  At the last moment, he caught at her fingers, but only fleetingly before releasing her.

Something had changed between them in the days he had been gone.  A sharp ache had started beneath her bottommost rib that had intensified the longer he had been gone.  Now he was back, it was agony.

Her anger had ebbed away, leaving her feeling empty and slightly ashamed.  Arya wished she could retreat behind the cool façade she’d learned playing the Game of Faces.  It had cracked under Jaquen H’Ghar’s questioning about the Hound, but it was shattered to the seven hells now.  She felt naked without it.

The waiting and watching for Clegane had left her malcontent and exhausted.  Arya rolled herself into the direwolf pelts and pushed the flap of the tent slightly open so that she could see him brooding into the flames.  The icy air that filtered through the gap in the canvas tasted like fresh snow, and she fell asleep watching the firelight play over his features.

* * *

Arya woke when Clegane finally found his way to the furs she’d laid out for him.  He laid on his back, his hands folded across his chest, but she could tell that he was no more settled after his hours of staring into the flames.  Tentatively, Arya wrapped cold fingers around his thick wrist and drew his hand away from his chest.  She laid back down so that her head was upon his shoulder and his arm was at her back.  Arya inched closer until her body was pressed firmly against his side and she laid her arm across his waist.

Coldly, he rasped, “What were you going to say?”

“When?”

“What were you going to say to Jon Snow?  What am I to you?”

Arya was instantly awake, and the ache beneath her ribs had been joined by a cold sensation writhing in her belly.  Stalling, she squirmed against Clegane, burrowing her head into his shoulder, laying her arm first across his waist and then folding it up against his ribs so that her fist nestled beneath her chin.

Unable to put off answering him any longer, she sighed.  “Most of my life, I’ve been afraid to fall asleep.  What was it that priest with the Brotherhood used to say?  ‘The night is dark and full of terrors?’”  Arya snorted.  “I’m never sure that if I close my eyes, I’ll wake up again.  When you’re here,” she shifted uneasily against Clegane’s side, “I can close my eyes and know no one will put a knife between my ribs.”

Derisively, he answered, “I make you feel safe.”

Arya took a breath and stared into the dark.  “You feel like home.  The way Winterfell did a long time ago.”

“Hmph.  Home.  The fuck do I know about home?  Only home I know is where people abuse you, neglect you, use you like a mindless dog, kick you, and turn you out when they’ve done with you.”

Arya lifted her head so she could glance up at his face.  “That’s not home.  Do you really think that’s what’s between you and me?”

Quietly, he answered, “No, that’s not what’s between us.”  Tentatively, Arya’s fingers found their way across his chest, and she idly turned the clasp of his brigandine over between her fingers.  He stilled her fingers by placing his heavy hand atop hers.  He rasped, “What is between us, then?”

“A lot of dead men that would have put us into our graves had we not been quicker.”  Clegane snorted quietly in amusement, and Arya smiled into the dark.  “I trust you.  I mean, you’ve got a hell of a temper and I get sick of being called ‘girl’, but it’s too quiet when you’re not here to snarl at me.”

When Clegane didn’t answer, Arya started idly tracing around one of the small steel plates stitched into his brigadine.

“We’re more alike than not.  No one else likes me for who I am, rather than who they want me to be.”  She craned her head on his shoulder to look up into his face, but he stubbornly stared at the canvas above them.  “I’ve seen the better part of you.  You don’t let anyone else know you, but I do.  I think . . .” Arya took a deep breath.  “I think maybe I could make you happy.  If you would let me.”

“Happy?”  He spat the word, like it was vile on his tongue.  “The fuck does that mean?  You think you’re happy here with me?”

The light was scant, but his eyes bored into her.  She nodded slightly.  “I’m home.  It took me long enough to find it, but I’m where I belong.”

Clegane snorted in disbelief and responded skeptically, “Nobody belongs here.  ‘specially not a highborn lady chasing the army of the dead through the snow.”  He muttered sullenly, “Crazy wolf bitch.    Why the fuck are you here, girl?”

“I came for you.”

Clegane’s voice had risen, and she was sure that anyone still awake would hear his exasperated tone.  “What does that mean?”

Arya sighed.  “In the House of Black and White, we played the Game of Faces.  They asked me questions, and they beat me when I failed to make them believe my lies.  I could lie about anyone, anything, but not about you.”  She laughed bitterly.  “Gods, the beatings I took when the waif found out I couldn’t lie about some man I called the Hound!  She questioned me for hours, and beat me unconscious more than once.”

“What?”  Clegane looked down at her sharply, anger and concern etched on his brow, but Arya ignored his question.

“I was so sure I wanted you dead for so long . . . then the Many Faced God took you from me, and I realized you were the only person left in the world that cared for me.”  Tears cut hot trails down her chilled skin, and she wiped them away angrily.  “The Many Faced God didn’t have to return you to me, but he did.  I think . . . I’m supposed to stay with you now.”

“Then why were you so angry when I came back?”  He paused in the charged dark between them.  “Why the fuck did you kiss me like that?”  He turned angrily to face her.  “For that matter, the fuck did you bite me for?”

“Because . . .”  Arya’s heart beat in her throat.  It was hard to speak around it, and she couldn’t get a deep enough breath into her lungs.  “Because I was afraid the Many Faced God took you from me again.”

“And the rest of it?”

Seven hells, why did she do the rest of it?  “I—“  She huffed.  “I don’t know.  I just needed to.”

“So it didn’t mean anything?”

Arya bowed her head and pressed her crown into the center of his chest.  So softly that she barely heard it herself, she answered, “I didn’t say that.”

They laid in silence for a long time before Clegane growled quietly, “You didn’t answer my question.  What the fuck am I to you then?”  When Arya didn’t answer, he murmured, “I’m the worst kind of man, broken and mutilated, guilty of the worst kind of atrocities, and twice your age.  The only thing I know how to do is kill, and you’re damn good at that all on your own, or you are when you aren’t distracted by what the fuck ever happens to you when we’re together.”

Arya ran her hands up the front of his brigadine and clasped the seams at the sleeve.  She pressed her face into the leather and felt his heart thumping erratically beneath layers of linen, chain, small plate, and leather.

Speaking to that rhythm, rather than the man it sustained, she said, “I don’t know.  I know that the only place I feel like myself is with you.  I know the only place I feel safe is with you.”  Arya’s belly clenched around a ball of writhing worms.  Though it terrified her, she was careening dangerously towards tearing down what remained of her defenses, stripping away the last of her masks.  She took a deep breath and plunged on, “I know that nothing feels as good as when you laugh.  When you’ve gone, I’m not sure where I belong.”  She snorted derisively.  “I know I’d cut down anyone else that called me ‘wolf bitch’.”

She braved a look at him.  His face was granite, his eyes jet, and the words nearly dried up on her tongue.  “All I’ve done most of my life is run and fight and try to survive.  By the gods, I’m tired.  There’s got to be more to living than killing Lannisters.”  She shrugged.  “I don’t know what this is, but if I have to, I’ll die right here fighting the dead with you because killing is all I know . . . and you’re the closest thing to home that I’ve got.”

Clegane closed his arms around Arya.  He haltingly lowered his face to hers, and when he pressed his lips to hers, it filled the emptiness within her, the space left vacant by the hating and running and killing.

When he broke away, he said, “Aye, but why did you bite me?  You drew blood, you crazy bitch!”

She heard the smile in his voice, and she smiled back into the dark.  “I was angry that you left me behind . . . you went out to tempt the Many Faced God, and you didn’t take me with you.”

Clegane squeezed her tightly, and she closed her eyes in relief.  Arya pressed her face against his leathers and gripped his shoulder.

When he spoke again, his voice had sobered.  “Arya.  You’re not a girl anymore.  What do you want from me?”

Arya took a deep breath.  “I told you . . .”  She hadn’t known it until she had said it, but it tasted like truth on her tongue.  “I think I could make you happy if you’d let me.”

Clegane spread his hands around Arya’s face.  “I fought for you to my very last breath, like you were my own whelp.  I was broken and useless, and I wanted to die from the shame of failing you.  I hated you for not killing me.  I hated myself for leaving you alone.”

Clegane pressed his lips together and shook his head slightly.  “This, though, this is different.  You’re not a lost little girl anymore.  You’re hard and wild and a killer, and damn me, I’d still cut down the Stranger himself to keep you with me.  The gods know I’ve tried to forget that you’re a woman grown, but with you pressed against me at night and your blade at my back during the day, you’re damn near the only thing I can think about.”  Raggedly, as though he’d choke on the words, he continued, “If you let me love you, and you leave me this time, you will kill me for certain.”

Arya kissed him slowly, making her own breath from his.  “I’ve been trying to get back home for half my life, and I’ve finally found the place where I can lay my head down and be safe.  Where else would I go?”

“Maybe.  Maybe you’re just glad you weren’t raped by a Thenn, and you’re grateful I’m the one that stopped it.  Maybe I’m just the only man you’ve ever really known that didn’t try to beat you or rape you, so you think you love me.”  His words stung more than Arya wanted to admit, but Clegane opened her mouth with a deep kiss that she would know he didn’t mean to hurt her.  “Maybe you’re not sure what you want, but I’ll be damned in the lowest of the seven hells before I claim you without being sure you want me.  You’re worth more to me than that.”

Gently, Clegane turned Arya away from him and gathered her against his body.  Wearily, he told her, “Go to sleep, little wolf.”

Arya clutched his wrist.  “If I go to sleep, will you be here when I wake?”

His answer was slow coming.  “Aye, I’ll be here.”  Tentatively, he pressed the bridge of his long nose into her hair and breathed, “Where else would I go?”

Arya didn’t answer, but instead wriggled deeper into his body and clasped his arms tighter around herself.  His warmth seeped into her, and she sighed with contentment.  With his searing warmth and solid body wrapped around her, she melted into him.  The ache that had built within her ribs had faded, replaced first by gratitude that Sandor had returned, and then by nascent tendrils of desire that unfurled pleasantly beneath her skin like wisps of smoke.  Arya pressed her fingertips to her lips, as though to hold his kiss there, and she could still taste him.  She dropped off to a deep sleep with his hand spread protectively across her belly and her head pillowed on his arm, completely without fear for the first time in many years.


	13. Threats and Lies

In the night, Arya had turned, and she woke with her nose pressed into the dense bramble of Clegane’s beard.  His arms were still wrapped firmly around her, and she couldn’t tell by his slow, deep breaths whether or not he still slept.  She turned her face until her lips found the warmth of his neck, and she pressed a kiss against his skin.

Clegane took a quick, shallow breath.  Not asleep then.  Arya kissed her way as far up his neck as she could manage without moving.  He held his breath, and his embrace tightened slightly.  She wrapped a hand around his shoulder and pulled herself slightly higher so that she could reach the soft skin behind his ruined ear.

“Arya . . .”  His voice was thick.  “Are you ready to hunt?”

She closed her eyes and pressed her face against Clegane’s neck.  For a few minutes, she listened to their breaths, hers quicker than it ought to be, his hissing through his nose as he tried to slow it, even though she could feel his heart racing beneath her hand.  She licked her lips and pressed another kiss to his neck before nodding into his warmth.

“I’m ready.”

Clegane didn’t look at Arya.  He busied himself putting on his boots, fussing over his armor, and collecting his bow.  Once they were out in the bracing cold, though, he seemed to regain himself.  Only the perimeter sentries were awake when they crept out of the camp and headed towards the wood.

As they crept between the trees, Clegane wouldn’t meet Arya’s eye, and he murmured something about trying the stream for fish.  Not long after, luck favored her.  Sweeping her bow through the underbrush, she spooked a fat grouse, and by the time she’d caught it, Clegane was returning with a pair of small trout. 

Arya grinned up at him.  “It’s a feast!”

He snorted.  “I hope it’s worth it.  You only slept a couple of hours, and you’ll be dead in the saddle by midday.”

Arya looked up into his face, and on the pretense of taking the string of fish from him, she laid her hand on his.  “It’s worth it.”

By the time the fish were cleaned and set to steam, the moon was only barely past its midpoint.  Having decided to save the grouse for their supper, Arya leaned back on her hands and watched Clegane sharpening his blade.

“What’s the dragon queen like?”

He snorted.  “Crazy, like every other fucking Targaryen.”

Arya stretched her foot out and nudged his knee playfully.  “How would you know?  How many Targaryens have you ever seen?”

The whetstone slowed on Clegane’s blade.  “Only dead ones.”  He looked up in time to see the smile slide from Arya’s face.

“You were there . . . the day King’s Landing was sacked.”

Clegane shook his head.  “No, but I saw their heads raised on pikes over the walls of King’s Landing, all that long silver hair waving like pennants in the breeze.  When he got drunk enough, Gregor used to boast about the woman he raped until he split her in half and her son whose skull he crushed in his hand like a ripe melon.” his eyes flicked up to Arya’s, haunted, “For years, he used to wear a braid of Elia Martell’s hair around his wrist . . . gods, what an evil cunt.”

“You’re not him.”  Arya wrapped her hand around his where it gripped the hilt of his sword.  “You’re nothing like him.”

The whetstone ground down the length of Clegane’s blade.  “I’d die of shame first.”

Arya eased the fish off the fire, and they ate in silence.  Her belly full and her fingers singed, she yawned broadly.

Clegane glanced up moodily.  “You ought to get a few more hours sleep or you’ll fall off your horse.”

Arya stood and stretched.  She paused as she walked past Clegane, now sharpening a dirk with a grip made from the angler of a stag.  Arya brushed her fingers down his cheek, and the stone slowed its path down the blade.

“You must be tired.”

Clegane turned the whetstone over between his fingers but didn’t look up.  “I’ll bide.”

Arya turned to go, and she could feel his eyes boring into her back, though she hadn’t the courage to meet them.  He didn’t resume his work until after she’d snuggled back into the pelts, and she fell asleep to the rhythm of his whetstone sliding over his blade.

* * *

With the news that their force would soon be met by the army of the dragon queen, the dragon queen and her army seemed to be the only things the men talked about.  Fear rose from the speculation like mist, and the men around them were becoming more and more restless.  Fights were breaking out with more regularity, too often with lethal results.  Jon assigned Clegane to help maintain order amongst his skittish bannermen.  Arya rode with him, hoping to bolster his authority with her Stark blood. 

They reigned in near a knot of drunken Manderlys brawling with a handful Dreadfort men, and Arya surveyed them with wry disgust.  “You know, if you left them to it, there’d be fewer bannermen to bitch and bicker.”

Clegane snorted.  “Aye, I think that’s what your brother is afraid of.”

Clegane dismounted and turned to hand Stranger’s reins to Arya.  As she took the reins, he stroked a thumb over her knuckles.  He glanced up at her and opened his mouth to continue, but a scream of pain rent the moment, and Clegane turned away with a grimace of frustration.

“Sandor!”

He turned, one brow cocked at her familiar use of his name.  “Aye?”

“Lord Manderly’s nephew carries about a dozen knives on him.  If he’s drunk, he’ll use them all.  Watch yourself.”

Clegane nodded his thanks and squeezed her ankle through her boot.  “Aye, I’ll do that.”

Clegane could usually quell most problems with a dirty look, standing close enough to dwarf most men, and the open threat of violence.  He rarely had to say much, and it was rarer yet that anyone was stupid enough to antagonize him to the point of drawing one of his blades.  He loomed over the drunken Manderly, but she didn’t hear what he said.  The whelp took a long, wide-eyed look at Arya, wiped his nose across his sleeve, and backed up several paces.  Arya lifted a brow coldly, and he blanched and bolted.  Clegane wrapped his hand around the pommel of his longsword and turned on the spot surveying the rest of them, and the assembled northmen gathered their things and dispersed, first with a wary look at him, and then at Arya.  Within minutes, he was back astride Stranger.

Impressed, Arya asked, “What did you say to them?”

Clegane smirked back.  “I told them if they didn’t shut the fuck up and get their asses back in their ranks, I’d make my Lady Stark a new pair of garters from their entrails.”

Arya snorted.  “I don’t think Sansa would approve!”

He looked at her oddly.  “I didn’t mean that Lady Stark.  I told them your new garters would match the fine riding gloves you’d had made from Lord Baelish’s back.”

Arya’s laughter cut through the crisp air.  She thought she’d snap a rib, and had to tug off her gloves to wipe away tears of mirth.  Gasping for breath, she asked him, “How long do you think it will take before every man in Jon’s army has heard that?”

“By the midday meal, I imagine.”  He smirked.  “By the time we meet up with the dragon queen’s army, the rumors’ll have you dressed from head to foot in leathers made of your enemy’s hides.”

“They really will believe I’m a crazy wolf bitch if you keep this up.”

Clegane gave her a long, proud look.  “Good.”


	14. Obligations

When Clegane reported back to Jon regarding the Manderlys, Arya stayed outside with the horses.  Stranger was nearly as notorious as his master, and none of the stable boys would tend him.  Several of them had already suffered vicious bites or kicks from the enormous stallion.  He didn’t like Arya, precisely, but he tolerated her.

“You bringing that black beast to be shod, my Lady?”

Arya turned to find Gendry passing by, laden with an armful of plate mail.  She shook her head and continued untangling brambles from the horse’s mane.  “Just waiting for Clegane while he reports to his Grace.”

Gendry leaned to the side to glimpse Clegane bent over a table looking at something with Jon.  “He’s a hard man, that one.  I was surprised to hear he rode with you.  He’s your sworn shield?”

“Not exactly.  He’s my friend.”

Within the tent, Clegane cocked his head and braced his hand on Jon’s table.  Arya wondered if he could hear her conversation with the smith.

Gendry shook his head.  “A man like Clegane, I’m not sure he has friends, my Lady.”

Arya drew herself up and narrowed her eyes at Gendry.  “You’re right.  He’s more like family.”

“You ready?”

Clegane glared sourly down at Gendry, and he nodded his acknowledgement.  Turning back to Arya, Gendry murmured, “Good day, milady.”

Clegane watched the young smith trudge away into the snow.  “You let him call you ‘my Lady’.”

Arya shrugged.  “He was my friend a long time ago.  I wanted him to go with me to the North, but he chose to stay with the Brotherhood.  He can’t imagine a world where lowborn and highborn don’t matter, and I tire of trying to explain it.”  She glanced up at Clegane.  “Sometimes you have to choose who you will make your family with.”

“Sometimes it’s not that easy.”

“Sometimes it is.”

Clegane glowered down at her.  When the wind tugged a lock of her hair loose, he caught it and tucked it behind her ear.  “Not when you’re the sister of the king.  He wants you to help him lead, and he’s expecting you for the war council this evening.”

“He told you that?”

Clegane took his horse by the bridle and started leading them away from Jon’s tent.  “Aye.  There’s a long list of things he wants you to do, but I told him there’s not a chance in the seven hells he’d get the rest from you.”

“What else does he want?”

Clegane kicked a chunk of broken ice from their path.  “More or less he wants you to be who you were born to be.  He wants Lady Arya to ride with him and share his tent so he can be sure you are safe.  He wants your council, the way he had Sansa’s.”

“I’m not Sansa.  I’m an assassin, not a politician or a soldier.  I don’t know anything about these men or how to win a battle.”

“Maybe not, but I do.  I’ve years at court watching them bitch and posture and intrigue and years of soldiering.  I could teach you.”

Exasperated, Arya huffed, “Why?  What’s the point?”

Clegane caught Craven’s bridle and halted them.  “Jon Snow is King of the North because he has Stark blood and united the Wildings, North, and Castle Black.  He’s a good man and a strong warrior, but even kings can fall in battle.  If he falls, you’re the only person who could unite the army of the North.  After killing the Thenns, even the Wildlings might follow you.  Whether you want it or not, they will turn to you to lead them if Snow falls.”

“Seven bloody fucking hells!  Just like that, you want me to be Sansa?  I’m not—“

“I don’t want you to be Sansa.”  Arya glared at him, and he glared right back.  “I’ve always told you the truth of the world, especially when you didn’t want to hear it, and I’m telling it to you now.  I don’t give a shit whether you’re high or lowborn, but I won’t stand by and let the dead swarm over the rest of Westros and swallow it whole.  Whether you’re his Lady Arya or my wolf bitch, the truth of your blood is that these men will look to you to lead them if their king is killed.  Would you rather Lord Umber or Lord Glover or the drunken fucking Manderlys take his place?”

Arya grimaced.  “Gods, no, but—“

“Aye!  Either would I.  That’s why I told him I’d see to it that you would be there.”

Arya glared at her boots and fumed.  She knew Clegane well enough to know that if he’d given his word that she’d be at the council, he’d make sure she was, even if he had to truss her and carry her in over his shoulder.

“You’ll stand with me?”

“Aye.  I always stand with you.”  Clegane glanced around wearily before hooking one of her fingers with his own.  He tugged her finger to draw her closer.  “His Grace doesn’t understand why you’ve become so distant, and I can’t explain it to him.  You love him; I know you do.”  Arya’s anger was draining away, and she looked up at Clegane.  He cupped her cheek in his hand, and she was drawn still closer to him.  “I think he’s afraid, and he needs your support.  He knows you’re not the girl you once were, but you’re still his favorite sister, and he wants you there.”

Arya nodded her assent, but asked, “When did the King of the North become your king?”

Clegane released her and gave Stranger’s reins a jerk.  “When I realized he was the only man standing between death and the rest of Westeros,” he glanced over his shoulder at her, “but threw my lot in with House Stark long before then.”


	15. Having and Knowing

Jon’s brows lifted in surprise when Arya and Clegane edged into the back of the crowded tent together, and he nodded his welcome.  Word had come that they would rejoin the Dragon Queen’s army within a day or two.  Every lord and his closest tacksmen all crowded together in Jon’s tent, and the meeting was quickly degenerating into an argument over the prominence of various bannermen within the army.  Behind her, Clegane sighed heavily.  It looked like this could continue on for several hours.

It was warm amidst the press of the Stark bannermen and Wildling clan leaders.  As the meeting droned on, she thawed and became somnolent.  Arya leaned against Clegane, and he adjusted his stance to support her weight.

When yet another pointless argument broke out between the Umbers and Glovers, Clegane had pulled her out of the way and his hand had remained protectively on her shoulder.  Occassionally, the side of his thumb would stroke up the side of her neck, sending a thrill of sensation through her body.  At first, she wasn’t sure he was doing it deliberately, but when she glanced up at him, the corner of his mouth was quirked up in satisfaction, though his attention was ostensibly focused on what was being discussed.

Standing against the back of the tent, they were both unobserved and largely forgotten.  As Clegane stroked Arya’s neck, her eyes fluttered closed, and she settled more comfortably back into his body.  Whether it was the increasingly tender attention Clegane was showing her, her exhaustion, the fear of the fight yet to come, or all of them combined, his touch was sending waves of heat burning through her.  She groaned too quietly to be heard, but he must have felt the vibration within her throat, for he responded with a soft rumble deep within his chest. 

Slowly, Clegane’s enormous hand slid from her shoulder down her arm.  With her body pressed against his, Arya felt his desire stirring, and her own kindled in response.  Clegane’s long fingers found their way into her furs, and insinuated themselves between the lacing of her brigadine and the padded jacket beneath so that they traced short, gentle strokes across her belly.  Arya closed her eyes, and the angry buzz of northern voices receded to a distant drone.  She laid her head back against Clegane’s chest, oblivious to anything but his burning touch, separated from her skin by only thin linen.   Emboldened, his fingers slid deeper into her brigadine.  Arya wrapped her hands around the muscular curve of his thighs just below his buttocks.  Simultaneously, Clegane took a sharp breath, and his cock hardened against her.

Clegane leaned down and murmured huskily into her ear, “What are you doing, girl?”

Arya glanced up at him and smiled coyly.  “Why?  Don’t you like it?”

He grimaced sourly at her.  “Aye, I think you know I like it.  Why are you doing it?”

She spread her fingers open and slid her hands so that they wrapped more deeply around his thighs.  Clegane went rigid and narrowed his eyes at her.  Sweetly, she answered, “Because it pleases you.”

Clegane drew his hands away from her body and hissed, “Stop!  You’ve no idea the kind of effect—“

“Clegane, was there something you wanted to add?”

He stood erect, his face thunderous and eyes flashing.  “I’m sorry, Your Grace.  Your sister is tired.  If you will excuse me, I’ll escort her back to her tent.”

Jon nodded his assent and went back to discussing some point or other with Lord Umber, red-faced at his shoulder.  As a narrow path cleared for them to the flap of the tent, amused and speculative glances shot between northmen and Wildings alike.  Clegane gave Arya a gentle shove towards the exit.

They crunched through the snow in silence.  When he paused by the fire, Arya asked quietly, “Aren’t you coming?”

Since their frank discussion a few days prior, Clegane had stopped brooding into the fire for hours before retiring.  Instead, he had been following her almost immediately when she retired.  After they’d both shrugged out of boots, mail, and light armor in a tense silence, he would open his arms for Arya and settle the wolf pelts around her, but nothing more.  She’d begun to look forward to his embrace, tonight especially so.

Moodily, he answered, “Aye, but not quite yet.”

Arya stepped closer and took one of his fingers.  “Are you angry with me?”

Clegane turned dark eyes upon her, but she didn’t think what smoldered there was anger.  “No, little wolf.”  His voice rasped thickly. “I’m just not sure I can lay beside you just yet.”

Arya felt her heart beating in her throat and she didn’t dare answer him.  She stepped closer and slid a hand up his arm.  When she wrapped her fingers around his elbow, his hand slid beneath her furs and around her waist.  With the slightest of pressure, Clegane pressed her close to him and cupped her face within the vast valley of his palm.  Arya closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his calloused skin.

Quietly, he pled, “Damn it, girl, what do you want from me?”

“Come keep me warm.”

Clegane released her, but Arya knew he would follow.  The silence between them was almost painfully awkward as they laid aside their blades and armor.  When he pulled her into his arms and she settled her body against his, she felt his cock already rigid.  Her own desire flushed hot beneath her skin and she shuddered in pleasure.

“Are you still cold?”

“No . . . I just . . . like the feel of you against me.”  She pressed her buttocks against him so that her meaning would be clear.

Clegane tightened his grip around her and pressed a trembling kiss against her neck.  Arya sucked in a deep breath.  He laid his head against hers.  “Woman, you’re going to be the death of me.”

“I thought I was your wolf bitch?”

Arya could feel Clegane’s heart pounding against her back.  He laid another kiss into the mess of her unwashed hair.  “Aye, you’re mine.”  Arya turned in his arms, and he lowered his face to hers seeking her mouth.  “Gods forgive me, but one way or another, you’ve always been mine.”

When he broke their kiss, Arya untied the neck of the wrinkled, damp sark he’d worn that day beneath his mail and folded it back.  She planted a row of kisses down his neck, from what remained of his ear to his shoulder.

Clegane groaned softly and bunched his hands in the back of her tunic.  “Gods, Arya, please don’t.  Not unless you’re sure.”

Arya’s blood sang beneath her skin, and she felt dizzy.  She laid her hands against his ribs and whispered, “What if I’m sure?”

His answer was a barely articulated breath.  “Then don’t stop.”

Arya ran her hands beneath his sark and across his ribs and down his belly.  Riding with an army on the march, she’d seen more men that she could count in every state of undress.  This was different.  She’d never touched a man, never appreciated the feel of velvet soft skin, bare here, covered in hair thick enough to comb her fingertips through there, scarred and ridged over hardened muscle there, and all searingly warm to the touch.  She’d never touched a man and known him to be hers.  The thought both thrilled and frightened her.

Softly, hesitating, Arya admitted, “I’ve no idea how to please a man.”

Clegane’s laugh was soft and caught in this throat.  He pulled her against him.  “Believe me, you do.”

Intoxicated by his sighs and quiet groans of enjoyment, Arya followed the curve of his buttocks beneath the coarse wool of his breeks, and he arched against her, grinding his desire into her body. 

He groaned.  “Are you sure?”  He caught up her face in his enormous hands and turned it up to face him.  “If you don’t want me, stop now.  If you come to me willingly now and put me aside later, it will break me like no one else ever could,” he searched her eyes and seemed unable to catch his breath, “but I swear before all the gods that if I claim you, it will be until my last breath.”

“I’m sure.”

Clegane kissed her, and this time it was with a hunger unleashed.  Time ceased to have meaning.  Winter receded, and Arya was ablaze.  She felt his touch and mouth on seeming every inch of her skin, the soft, moist caress of his tongue, his enormous hands cradling her, squeezing her, stroking her.  When he entered her, it was with exquisite care, slowly, gently, with soft kisses to her neck and achingly sweet murmurs of encouragement.  Though he emptied himself after only a dozen firm strokes, he continued loving her gently until she dissolved beneath him, gasping his name into his ear.

Clegane settled Arya into the hollow of his shoulder, stroking her damp hair away from her face.  He stared up at the canvas above them, shivering beneath the wind.  “I didn’t see it before.”

Sleepily, Arya hummed inquisitively.  “What didn’t you see?”

Clegane pressed her more tightly against him, and she wrapped her thigh around his and tightened her grip around his waist.  He pressed a firm kiss to her moist brow and trailed the tips of his long, blunt fingers down her back.  She shivered against him in pleasure.

“I could never figure out why a man would be willing to throw his life away over fucking some woman.  There’s thousands more.  It’s not for the woman.”

“No?”

“No.  It’s for the way a man feels when that woman clutches her to him after the fucking.  It’s for how she makes you feel when she sighs in your ear and you know it’s for you.  The having and knowing she’s yours.  Knowing that you’d only feel that way again if it was her holding on to you in the night.  I’d bathe in wildfire to hold on to that.”

Arya lifted her head from his shoulder.  “Surely you’ve felt that before?  I saw you . . .”  She hesitated and turned her face back into his neck.  “I saw you once go into a brothel.”

Clegane went still beside her, and he tapped his thumb nervously against her hip.  “Aye, I went to the brothels, but fucking a woman that doesn’t want you is nothing like loving a woman that does.”  He turned his face to search her eyes, his brow creased with concern.  “Are you happy?  Have I made you happy?”

She stroked a hand tenderly down the ruined, puckered flesh of his scarred face.  “I’m home.  Nothing could make me happier.”


	16. Lady of the Dreadfort

In the morning, he was gone.  When Arya reached for him, his furs were cold, though the heady perfume of his musk lingered in the close air within their tent, in the wolf pelts, on her skin.  She still tasted him.  Her eyes stung, and she scrubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes so that the tears would not fall.  She loathed herself for how deeply it cut that even a man like the Hound wouldn’t want her for more than a night’s fucking.  Arya pressed trembling hands over her face and tried to ignore the writhing of shame in her belly.  When she breathed in the aroma of their lovemaking, her desire quickened, and she was disgusted with herself.

Arya dressed quickly and tried to put on the placid, stony mask she’d acquired playing the Game of Faces.  It cracked and crumbled every time a bittersweet memory of the night before rose before her inner eye.  At last, she reached for her sword belt, both loving and hating the steel that hung from it, her father’s remade blade, a gift from Sandor Clegane.  She tried not to look at the sword, and wished now she’d refused it in favor of Needle’s insubstantial but untainted weight.

When she lifted her blade from amid the twisted pile of furs, something clinked against the elaborate quillion.  A long, buttery strip of worn leather was knotted around the hilt of her sword, and from it swung a thick gold band. 

Arya slapped the flap of the tent aside as she strode out, her throat thick and barely able to breathe.  In the low light from neighboring fires, she turned the ring between her fingers and saw that engraved upon its surface were three running hounds separated by a faceted chip of topaz and a chip of jet.  Experimentally, Arya slid it onto the index finger of her sword hand, and though it was loose, it fit well enough.

The topaz winked dully in the low light as she examined the ring.  Though the gold was unmarred and gleamed, the style was reminiscent of jewelry that was worn in her grandmother’s time.  Arya clamped her teeth together and scanned the dark, though she knew Clegane wouldn’t be there.  It wasn’t his way.  She looped the strip of leather around her wrist and pulled her gloves on over what surely was his mother or grandmother’s ring.

Arya pressed her eyes shut and sighed with relief.  She prayed to the old gods and the new that she’d not seen the last of him.  Whatever impulse had made him rise from their furs and leave her side, it wasn’t because he didn’t want her.  He’d told her as much before they’d fallen asleep in one another’s arms, and she’d have to trust in that. 

Arya traced the path of the gold band beneath her glove with her thumb and considered the alternative.  Grimly, she decided that for his sake, he’d better hope she didn’t have to hunt him down.  If she did, a bite would be the least of his worries.  She tried to press down her misgivings as she packed their things.  By the time the camp was ready to move, she wasn’t surprised that Sandor Clegane hadn’t returned.

Throughout the day, Arya rode with her face turned resolutely forward.  Though every time a man of significant height rode by, her stomach swooped, she refused to look for Sandor amongst the army.  He’d reappear when he was ready.  For once, she was grateful for the monotony of the march.  She forced herself to think of nothing, and simply concentrated on guiding her horse’s feet one step at a time forward.

A few hours after midday, another brawl broke out between the Manderlys and what remained of the Bolton bannermen.  By the time Arya arrived, Sandor was already in their midst, his longsword out.

“—they’re Northmen like the rest of you worthless cunts, and they’ll die just the same when the White Walkers come!”

A stocky Manderly with a shock of dirty blond hair growled back, “They’re Bolton traitors!  The King of the North should never have allowed any of them to live.”

“Aye?  We’re all traitors, every one!  Eddard Stark was named traitor and killed for trying to save Westeros from the bastard king and his cunt of a mother.  Tywin Lannister named me traitor when I refused to bleed for them at the Battle of Blackwater Bay.  Cersei Lannister named every one of you traitors for rebelling against the Iron Throne.  Your king gave the Bolton men the choice of serving the North or losing their heads.  They chose the North and life, and that’s the end of it!”

“What would you know of it, you fucking Lannister dog?”  The Lord Wyman Manderly had arrived, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.  “Your blood hasn’t defended the North.  It doesn’t run cold like ours.”

Arya pressed her heels into Craven’s ribs and pushed her way between the grumbling bannermen.  “Sandor Clegane has bled for me more times than I can count.  If you question his loyalty and authority, you question my own.”  Her eyes glittered coldly.  “Would you care to try to lay my veins open to see if anything but Northern ice runs there?”

Lord Manderly glared a moment at Sandor before shaking his head resentfully.  “No, my Lady.”

“Who speaks for the Dreadfort bannermen?”

Arya scanned the milling northmen, but no one came forward.  “The Bolton bannermen swore a new oath of fealty to the King of the North and House Stark.  Until a suitable commander can be found amongst you, I will speak for the Dreadfort.  Sandor Clegane will lead your forces.”  Sandor whipped around and leveled a dark glare on Arya.  Undeterred, she continued, “I’ve no doubt he will either bring you to heel or cut out any remaining dissention in your ranks.  Permanently.”

Casting warning glances to either side, Sandor strode to stand at her stirrup.  “Are you sure, my Lady?”

Arya lowered her voice.  “Am I sure about putting you in command, or am I sure about you?”

He lowered his eyes.  “Both.”

“I’m always sure about you.”  His gaze flicked back to hers.  Loud enough that those assembled could hear, Arya continued, “You’re the only battle-hardened commander pledged to House Stark without troops to command.  I trust you’ll help them remember where they belong.”


	17. Burn Us Together

The snarl of angry voices was audible for at least thirty yards before Arya reached Jon’s tent for the night’s war council.  Clegane was easily visible over the heads of the assembled lords and commanders, but he refused to meet her eye.  She fought her way through the throng, but once the lords realized who was trying to push them aside, a path was opened for her to Jon’s side.

“Lady Arya.”  Jon nodded his welcome.  “I understand you have taken command of the Dreadfort forces.”

A cacophony of outrage erupted.

“I have every—“  She tried several times to be heard over the other lords.

“Quiet!”  Sandor roared.  He looked daggers at the assembled northmen.  “Lady Stark is addressing you.  The next man that opens his mouth when she’s speaking will find if filled with my steel.”

Arya glared around at the assembled lords.  “House Bolten is broken, but the Dreadfort still lies well within the North.  I may not be King of the North, but I am a Lady of Winterfell, and I am well within my rights to call up my bannermen, just as I could call up the forces belonging to any one of you.”

A disgruntled voice out of sight rumbled resentfully, “You’re a woman.”

Before Arya could answer, Lyanna Mormont strode through her men and slammed the flat of her blade down on the table.  “Aye!  She’s a woman and you owe her your allegiance.  Mormont steel will go straight up the arse of the next man who speaks against a Lady leading the men of her house.”  She stepped onto the table so she could see over the heads of the northmen.  “We’re too few to be squabbling over the lengths of our cocks.”  A ripple of appreciative laughter filtered between the men.  “You don’t give two shits about the Bolton men.  The only reason any one of you has any interest at all is that you were hoping to put your own son in the Dreadfort.”  She glared around at them.  “Too many rebellions have started in the bowels of the Dreadfort.  It’s time a Stark finally took it in hand.”

With a final quelling glare around the tent, Lyanna stepped off the table. 

“Lady Mormont is right.”  Jon addressed his bannermen gravely.  “Lady Arya is well within her rights to take command of her own bannermen.  I should have looked to the Bolton men myself before now.  They pledged their allegiance to the Stark banner in exchange for their lives.  They can answer to her command or see their lives forfeit.  If they’ve any qualm about taking their command from a woman, they can remember the kind of scum they took their orders from previously and shut their mouths.” He glared around.  “I’ll hear no more regarding the Dreadfort or the Bolton men.  We’ve more important matters at hand . . .”

Arya stood the rest of the meeting at Jon’s shoulder, arms crossed.  Several times, she caught Sandor’s eye across the tent, but every time, he turned his face away.  He ducked out of the tent and into the dark the moment the meeting was adjourned.  Arya turned to follow him, but Jon detained her.

“Thank you.”

Reluctantly, Arya tore her eyes away from the flap of the tent, filled with northmen anxious to find their beds.  “What for?”

“I know you’re not the same as you were;” he laughed nervously, “none of us are.  I need you to be with me.  I need you at my side.  These are your men—Stark men.  The Starks need to stand together, or the North never will.”

Arya nodded and glanced at the tent flap, finally closed behind the last northman.  “The only thing I know of war is what you taught me before you left Winterfell:  stick them with the pointy end.”  Jon’s face broke into the warm smile she remembered from her youth, and she answered it with her own.  “Our father wouldn’t have abandoned men just because their lord was a worthless rotten shit.  He’d have remembered that he was responsible for every soul in the North, no matter how low or high.”

“The North remembers.”

Arya nodded.  “The North remembers, and so will I.”

She turned to go, but as her hand pushed the canvas aside, Jon asked quietly, “You wouldn’t have started coming to the war council had Sandor Clegane not asked you, would you?”

Arya pressed her thumb against the hidden gold band and pulled her eyes away from the night.  “No.”

Jon looked down at the maps spread on the table and the little tokens marking the maneuvers of his enemies.  “He’s no lord or ser, but I doubt there’s a man here that could best him in battle, and his honor is strong as Valyrian steel.  I’m glad to know that it’s his blade at your back.”

“So am I.”

Arya stepped into the brittle cold and took a deep breath.  An enormous weight was lifted off her, and as much as she hated to admit it, Sandor had been right in insisting that she attend the war council.  Perhaps there was a way she could find peace between the lady she had been raised to be and the woman she had become.  She narrowed her eyes and squinted into the sooty dark.  Now if only the damned fool would come home!

* * *

It was late when Sandor trudged into the circle of light spread by her fire.  The camp was quiet, and she was sure that they were the only two souls in the army still awake.  He met her gaze warily, and when Arya narrowed her eyes at him, he looked away into the dark.  If Sandor had hoped to wait until she’d fallen asleep to crawl back into her bed, Arya had no intention of making it that easy.

“You were gone when I woke this morning.”

“Aye.  I thought maybe it was best if I wasn’t there.”  He pursed his lips and shifted his weight from heel to heel.  Speaking to his boots, he growled softly, “I thought maybe you’d not still want me.”

“But you hoped I would.”

“Aye.”  It was a sharp bark.  He hung his head and continued softly, “I hoped you would.”

Arya’s eyes travelled over Clegane.  Every muscle was taught as a bowstring, and his thumb drummed against the pommel of his longsword.  “I was worried you wouldn’t come back.”

Clegane glanced at her for the briefest moment.  “Thought about not coming back, but . . .”

“But?”

“Decided I’d rather risk you skewering me if you didn’t want me than lose the chance of having you if you did.”  He stared hard into the dark and rasped quietly, “Even a little.”

“When I woke alone, I was sure it was you that didn’t want me.”

Clegane cut his eyes sharply back to Arya, and they bored into her.  “I left something for you.  I thought . . .”  He crouched beside the fire under the pretense of enjoying its warmth, though Arya knew that being so close to the flames made his skin crawl.  “I’d hoped you’d find it and know how much I do.”

Clegane continued staring into the fire, and his voice was barely louder than the crackle of the flames.  “By the Seven, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.  With your hair all mussed up and you bare and pale as your name day . . . gods, every sweet, soft inch of you was wrapped around me beneath those wolf pelts.”  He pressed his eyes shut.  “I’ve never wanted a woman the way I wanted you this morning.  It was everything I could do not to fuck you senseless.  I thought I’d die of wanting you.  But if you had woken up and looked at me,” Clegane choked on a sob, “like the wretched dog that I am . . . I’d have killed you and then myself with the shame of it.”

“So rather than risk it, you left?”

Clegane tucked his chin into his chest and shook his head.  “No woman would ever want to wake up next to a monster like me, not for all the gold in Lannisport.  I’ve seen the dread in enough whores’ faces to know the truth of it.”

Slowly, Arya drew off her gloves and closed the few feet between them.  She laid her hand on his shoulder, and the firelight danced across three running hounds. 

“I did.”

Clegane drug his eyes up to meet hers, and in their depths, she saw a child very small, very broken, desperate to be wanted. 

“Aye?”

Arya nodded convulsively.  “Yes.”  She pulled him to his feet.  He towered over her, and when she pressed her body against his, she had to crane her neck far back to see the uncertainty in his features.  “But if you leave me in the night again, I’ll cut your cock off and mix it into your horse’s feed.”

A broad smile split Clegane’s face and he laughed huskily.  “Little wolf bitch, the only time I’ve ever truly left your side is when the Stranger tried to drag me away.”  He lifted Arya off the ground into his arms and kissed her bruisingly.  A flood of relief and desire poured through her body, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and melted into him.  When he broke their kiss, he laid his forehead against hers, panting.  “If you’d have me, they’ll have to burn us together, because I’ll not leave you ever again.”


	18. Honor from the Ashes

In the morning, Jon decided to let the dragon queen’s army come to him.  While most men spent the morning trading stories and sharpening blades, the bannermen of the Dreadfort had to face the scrutiny of Sandor Clegane.  Before leaving their tent, he’d barely spared time to brush a scratchy kiss over Arya’s cheek.

“Where are you going?”

“To turn Bolton men into Stark men.”

“Wait!” 

Arya scrambled to grab a tunic and pull it on.  When the wrinkled, salt-stiffened linen slid right over her shoulders and pooled around her waist, she realized she’d grabbed one of Sandor’s by mistake.  She glanced up to see Sandor grinning down at her. 

“There’s no need for my Lady to hurry.  I’d have a word with them first.”

Arya tossed his tunic aside and found her own, equally filthy.  “What kind of words do you intend to have with my men?”

Sandor knelt beside her and smoothed her hair back from her face.  “I’m going to tell them about the new Lady of the Dreadfort,” he kissed her, “who doles out justice with her own blade.  They’ve all seen the skins of flayed men on display in its halls.  I’m going to explain to them just how much I’ll enjoy seeing my Lady’s sweet northern arse riding on a saddle made of their hides if they consider raising a hand against her.”

“Do you really think that will help?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

* * *

“My Lady.”

Arya guided her horse nearer to Sandor’s and murmured quietly, “I think I prefer it when you call me ‘wolf bitch’.”

He smirked at her.  “Aye, so do I, but it won’t do for them to hear it.”

“Is this all that’s left of Bolton’s men?  I thought he brought an army of six thousand to bear at the Battle of the Bastards.”

Arya’s eyes scanned the narrow column that Clegane had arranged the men into.  Two blocks of men stood ten wide and ten deep.  “The Knights of the Vale were thorough in their extermination.  By the time the King of the North stopped the executions, this was all that remained.  They were quick to swear allegiance,” he glowered darkly over them, “considering their alternative.”

“Their allegiance was bought by fear . . . that’s no true allegiance at all.”

“Aye.”

“What did you tell them that you think will bring them to our side?”

Clegane pointed with his chin at short, muscular man with a scraggly graying beard.  He had a pair of axes and a blunt war hammer strung through his belt and eyed Arya skeptically.  “You there.  Tell Lady Stark what I told you.”

“He says that the king’s bannermen hate you, hate us, and hate him.”  He eyed Sandor resentfully.  “He said you cut the throat of the man that brought the Vale to murder our brothers and sons.”  Arya cocked a brow and glanced at Sandor.  This was strictly true, but there was no connection between the two deeds.  He continued, “He says your sister fed the vicious bastard that led our brothers and sons into that war to his hounds.  He says you went to Braavos to learn to flay your enemies, taking only the face as tribute to your god.”  Arya narrowed her eyes at Sandor.  Again, truth, but in service of an artful lie. 

“And?”  Sandor prompted.

The man lifted his chin a bit and eyed Arya speculatively.  “He says you alone spoke for the men of the Dreadfort when the other lords of the North would have us strung up for defending our good names.” 

Arya gave Sandor a hard look before addressing her men.  “Many orphans and widows will huddle in the dark this winter because your liege lord led you into a war of treason.  He wasted your kinsmen’s blood, and the snow that falls on the Dreadfort is crimson.  They call me craven, an abomination, but I ask no forgiveness for hunting down and killing the men that brought my house low.  They call you savages and traitors, but House Stark has hunted down the men who brought your houses low and fed them to the dogs.  This war is a gift from the Stranger.  If you fight well, if you do not die, you can redeem your honor and wipe the crimes of the Bolton bastard from your names.  Your blades are sharp, and winter has come.  Will you fight for your honor?”

“Aye!”

“Will you fight for your women and your children and your homes?”

“Aye!” 

“Will you fight with me to protect the living?”

“Aye!”

Their cry was cut short when a dragon flew low over the assembled men and screamed.  As one, the men crouched, and flayed man shields formed a protective barrier between them and the terror in the sky.  Arya gaped at the beast slack-jawed, but Sandor merely grimaced in distaste.  When the dragon heeled in the sky and turned back south, the men rose.

“Break your vow to Lady Stark,” Sandor growled, “and I’ll see to it that you are fed to the dragons.”

Arya’s eyes fell on a young squire, barely taller than the Bolton shield he carried.  “The next time I see those shields raised, I had better not see a flayed man, or you will learn how sharp my blade is.”

A tall knight near the back of the column asked, “What sigil would our lady have painted on our shields?”

She looked at Sandor thoughtfully.  “A white direwolf and a black hound, separated by crossed swords on a field of gray.  Let no man question that your blades are sharp, that you serve the North, or that you belong to me.”

“And our words?” called another man in perhaps the fourth or fifth row of the column.

“Honor from the ashes.”


	19. Certainty

Jon selected only a few of his bannermen along with Arya and Sandor to be there when Daenerys arrived.  They placed themselves towards the edge of the northern contingent, hoping to be overlooked entirely when the queen’s retinue arrived.

While they waited, Arya raked Sandor with an appraising eye.  “I’d not have suspected you had such a talent for weaving together truth and deceptions.”

Sandor pursed his lips.  “I spent most of my life watching the Lannister court intrigue and scheme.  I kept my mouth shut most of the time, but even a simpleton could have learned how it was done.”

A pair of enormous shadows raced over the tundra and shaded them from the wan light.  Arya sucked in a gasp of icy air.

“By the gods, they’re big.”

“Aye.  Pray they are big enough to cut down the army of the dead when we find it.”

The ice whined and cracked below their enormous weight when the dragons alighted in the snow, and they let out deafening shrieks that made Arya’s bones ache.  From the back of the largest beast slid a shapely woman of about Arya’s size with silver hair in an elaborate plait, followed by a taller woman, obviously from the region of the Summer Sea.  They were followed by a thin man in leather armor and helm, his arms bared, a balding knight wearing a mixture of desert and Westerosi garb, and incredibly, even Tyrion Lannister himself clambered carefully down from the great scaly beast.

The small party came to a halt perhaps ten paces from Jon, and the willowy woman proclaimed loudly, “You have the pleasure to be in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, rightful queen—“

Arya leaned closer to Sandor.  “Seven hells.  How long is this going to go on?”

“A goodly while.  If the dead want to kill us, all they need do is stand back and wait for the dragon queen to arrive.  By the time the formalities are done, they’ll have overrun us completely.  It’s little better in King’s Landing.  You remember what it was like every time Joffrey sat his spoiled ass down.”

Arya glanced up surprised.  “Father never took me to court.  Probably terrified of the kind of destruction I would cause.”  She smiled fondly, remembering the many times he’d gently disciplined her for disastrous behavior.  “By the time Joffrey was crowned, I had fled the Red Keep.”

“ . . . Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea . . .”

Clegane creased his brow.  “Aye . . . it was so long ago, I’d forgotten.  Gods, you were young back then.”

Arya hummed quiet assent.  “Another lifetime.”

”Another lifetime.”

“ . . . Breaker of Chains.”

The pleasantries finally at an end, the dragon queen stepped forward and spoke quietly with Jon Snow.  From her position, Arya couldn’t see Jon’s face, but she saw the resentful expression of the Westerosi knight when Jon stepped familiarly close to the queen.

“Who is that man standing behind the dragon queen?”

Sandor took a slow breath.  “Ser Jorah Mormont.”

“Mormont . . . didn’t my father sentence a Mormont to death for selling slaves?”

“Aye, the same, but he received a royal pardon from Robert Baratheon.  He’s one of the dragon queen’s most trusted advisors.”  When Arya didn’t respond, Sandor clasped her fingers amongst their furs.  “Let’s not kill him, aye?”  She looked up at him and smirked.  “I’d as soon not be fed to the dragons.”

“Hmmm.”  Arya watched as Jon led the dragon queen closer, introducing her to his bannermen.  “She is beautiful.”

Sandor only offered a noncommittal grunt in response.  “It’s hard to tell.  I’m too busy watching the damned fire breathing beasts.”

Arya grinned up at him.  “They’re beautiful too.”

“You didn’t have to ride on the fucking thing.  Almost told them to put me back with the dead.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

He hmph’ed quietly in response.  The queen’s party had reached them, but before Jon could introduce them, Daenerys herself spoke.

“Clegane.  Back to face the dead again.”

He grimaced dourly down on the dragon queen.  “Aye, your Grace.”

Daenerys gave Sandor her tight formal smile and turned her eyes to Arya.  “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your companion.”

“This is my . . .” Sandor paused and glanced at Arya just a second too long before recovering himself.  “ . . . my Lady Arya of House Stark.”

Daenerys’s silver brows lifted and her smile deepened.  Jon interjected, “My sister, your Grace.”

The queen cocked her head expectantly.  Arya realized too late that a curtsy or some other acknowledgement was expected.  She snorted quietly in amusement instead.

Daenerys narrowed her eyes subtly and folded her hands before her.  “It was kind of you to come all this way to see your brother off.”  When Arya and Sandor shared a dark look, she continued, “Surely, you don’t intend to march out to face the dead, Lady Stark?”

Arya lifted her chin subtly.  “The North has been held by Stark blood for hundreds of years.  If our bannermen go to war, so will I.”

 “So you didn’t come to bend the knee either.”  Daenerys smiled sweetly, her cheeks dimpling.  Her eyes remained cold.  “Are all northerners so stubborn, or just Starks?”

Jon shot Arya a filthy look.  “I’m sure what my sister meant was—“

“You’ll find there’s little difference between Starks and other northerners.  When you’ve a throne, your Grace, and a kingdom to rule, we can discuss whether or not I need bother bend my knee.”

Daenerys offered a soft, pretentious, feminine laugh.  “It should be very simple. The King of the North has already pledged the North to me.”

“That may be, your Grace, but I think you’ll find my knee is stiffer than my brother’s.”

The queen swiveled her head to look up at Sandor.  “And what of you, Clegane?  I believe Clegane holdings lie in Lannister lands.  Where do your loyalties lie?”

Sandor drew himself up slightly.  “I fight for the living . . . but I’m pledged to House Stark.”

Daenerys’s eyes flicked between the two of them, and her lips quivered with amusement before replying, “Sincere loyalty is a true prize indeed.  I suspect yours is not easily earned.”  She raked her eyes over Arya.  “Perhaps when House Stark is asked where their loyalties lie next time, they will recall that it was me and my dragon that plucked you and the King of the North up from amongst the dead and delivered you home safe.  Good day, ser.”

Jon led the queen away, but not without throwing Arya one last furious glare.  She watched him guide Daenerys away speculatively.

“You let her call you ser.”

“It’s not worth the effort to correct her.  The only highborn lady I’m of a mind to impress doesn’t care about her own title, little lone mine.”

“There was a time, my Lady, when you were one of the most valuable commodities in all of Westeros, and look at you now, so grown up and lovely.”  Arya dropped her eyes, startled to find Tyrion Lannister smiling up at them.  “Imagine my surprise to finally find you here, and with the Hound, no less.”

Sandor bristled beside her, but Arya squeezed his fingers, still concealed in their furs, and answered quietly.  “My home is here.  Where else would I be?”

His voice softened and warmed.  “It has been my experience that home is where and what you make of it, my Lady.  I wonder if you would walk with me.  I am eager to learn what has become of Lady Sansa.”

Arya glanced at Sandor without thinking, and he gave her the smallest of nods.  Too late, she realized the gesture had told the Lannister dwarf more than she would have liked, and he grimaced sympathetically back at them, the corner of his mouth curled up shrewdly.  “I promise, I’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”

* * *

“How long have you known Lady Arya?”

Sandor was uneasy watching Arya walk away with Tyrion Lannister.  Shrewd and cunning as she was, the imp had far more experience intriguing that she did.  He tore his eyes and thoughts away from their retreating backs to address Jorah.

“Long time.  Since she was a child.”

Jorah crossed his arms.  “She’s no child now.  Is she any good with that blade, or is it just for show?”

Sandor grinned proudly at Jorah.  “She’s a killer, that one.  Threaten what’s hers, and she’ll have your bowels on your boots before you’ve even noticed she’s there.”

“I can see the attraction.”

Sandor glared at Mormont.  “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

Jorah folded his hands on the pommel of his sword.  “You’re not her shield.  A highborn lady doesn’t allow her shield to stand so close.  She doesn’t smile when he murmurs in her ear like she does for you.”  He glanced across the snow to where Arya walked with Tyrion.  “She wouldn’t look to you for approval before she walked away with another man.  She’d know you’d sit and stay like a dog until she had need of you again.”  His gaze shifted to include Jon and Daenerys, and he concluded bitterly, “Trust me.  I’ve reason to know.”

* * *

“I understand that Lady Sansa is flourishing as the Lady of Winterfell.”

Arya smiled placidly down at the imp.  “She was always meant to be a lady of a great house.  Or a queen.”

“You don’t approve?”

Arya lengthened and slowed her strides to take one step for every two of the dwarf’s waddling gait.  “I have no doubt that she will rebuild Winterfell and House Stark.  It is everything to her, and she’ll allow nothing to stand in her way.”

He smiled bitterly.  “She sounds like my father.  Every decision he made was to build or protect the Lannister legacy.”

“He was a shrewd man.  You remind me of him.”

Tyrion stopped abruptly and snarled, “What in the seven hells would you know about my father?”

“He saved my life.  When the Mountain was terrorizing the villages around Harrenhall, Tywin Lannister plucked me from a pen of prisoners and made me his cupbearer.”  She grimaced in consideration.  “I liked him, but it couldn’t have been easy to be his son.”

“I think your opinion of him would have been somewhat different, had he realized you were the missing Stark girl.”

Arya folded her hands behind her back and squinted against the gritty ice that the wind threw into her face.  “He knew I was from the North and highborn.  I’d be surprised if he hadn’t at least considered who I might be.  If he would have known, I think he would have treated me honorably and traded me for the Kingslayer.  His burning desire to get his son back was the focus of every war council.”

“You have quite a talent for impressing dangerous men, Lady Arya.”  Tyrion looked pointedly over his shoulder, but Arya refused to give him the satisfaction of following his gaze.  She knew precisely where Sandor Clegane stood, as surely as though a thread was tied from her bottommost rib to his.  “I wonder how you manage it.”

“Cersei told Sansa once that a woman’s best weapon was between her legs,” Arya gave him an acid smile, “but I’ve always found that my wits and several inches of castle forged steel are more than adequate for my purposes.”

He lifted his heavy brow appreciatively.  “And what are those, I wonder?”

“Protecting my family and my home.”  She smiled placidly down at the imp.  “You said you wished to know of my sister’s wellbeing?”

Tyrion adjusted the furs on his shoulders and gave her a dark look.  He took a slow breath.  “I do.  I understand she was treated most foully by Ramsay Bolton.”

“To say the least.”  Arya peered down at him.  “Why do you care?”

Tyrion lifted his chin and stretched his neck uncomfortably.  “She’s my wife.  She didn’t want to be, but I placed a cloak on her shoulders and brought her under my protection.”

“Piss poor job you did of it.”  Tyrion glared up at her, grinding his teeth together and twisting his lips.

They had reached the edges of the Wildling encampment.  Arya planted her feet in the snow shoulder width apart and wrapped her hand around the pommel of her sword.  “Petyr Baelish stole her right from under your nose and then gave her to Bolton.  Bolton raped and beat her until she could barely stand.  The only reason she’s still alive is because she’s the Lady of Winterfell, and he needed an heir from her to legitimize his claim on the North.”  Arya cocked her head and narrowed her eyes.  “Is that what you want, my Lord?  A little Lannister son from your Stark wife?  You want to be the Warden of the North?”

Tyrion hung his head and pursed his lips.  “No.  I’ll either continue to serve as the hand of the queen or be executed for treason if Daenerys is defeated.  Sansa is still my wife, and I do care for her.  I’d offer her what comfort and protection I can in the storm to come.”

 “You can’t protect her, my Lord, not now.  Winter, the dead, and Cersei Lannister are coming for her.  It will take more than your cloak and your favor to keep her safe.”

Tyrion glanced slyly at Sandor.  “What did the Hound do to earn your favor, I wonder?”

“He killed with me.  He bled for me. . . . He died for me.”

Tyrion rolled his shoulders back uncomfortably.  “I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to prevent that eventuality.  It’s the primary focus of my life, really.”

Heavy steps crunched across the ice-crusted snow.  Arya met the smoldering steel in Sandor’s eyes, and a small bird beat its wings frantically beneath her ribs.  As his enormous stride closed the distance between them, warmth blossomed beneath her skin, though it wasn’t desire that quickened her blood.  It was certainty.  There was little to be sure of in this world, but she knew Sandor Clegane would pour out the last drop of his blood to defend her, and she no longer doubted that she’d breathe her last breath guarding his back.  That she could depend upon, and she needed nothing else.

Dark satisfaction curled her lips.  “That’s not how a man protects his woman.  If it takes so much effort to protect your own neck, you’ve no business pretending to protect anyone else’s.”  She smirked down at him. “Good day, my Lord.”


	20. Conclave

Much of that day was spent working out the logistics of maneuvering the King of the North’s disjointed army with the Dothraki and Unsullied as a unified force.  Throughout the tedious negotiations, Arya said little, but watched and listened carefully at her brother’s elbow.  When Jon’s eyes lingered on the dragon queen, Arya smirked.  When Sandor’s eyes lingered on Arya, she burned.

Eventually, a warg had been summoned to the war council to finalize plans for the combined army’s first maneuver.  Sandor glared at the Thenn woman at Jon’s side as she stood motionless gazing through the canvas, her eyes glazed, sightless and yet not. 

He sidled closer to Arya and murmured in her ear, “The fuck is she doing?”

Arya glanced up at Sandor.  “Haven’t you ever heard of a warg?”

“The fuck’s a warg?”

“She can see through the eyes of her owl.  She’s scouting for the dead.  Northern legends are full of wargs and White Walkers and ice spiders.”  Arya shivered, and excitement bubbled in her stomach.  When Sandor hmph’ed skeptically, she smiled.  “I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen Bran do it.”

The Thenn woman’s eyes cleared and found Arya amongst the assembled commanders.  The warg didn’t take her eyes from Arya though she spoke to Jon.  “Three days from great stone house.”

Ned Umber bristled at Jon’s side.  “What stone house?  Where are they headed?”

The Thenn woman laid a finger on Jon’s tattered map just south of Eastwatch.  She slid her stubby finger south, following the coast of the Gift.  Umber sucked in a deep breath and held it as her fingertip slowed near his holding, but it passed Last Hearth and skirted the forest that surrounded Karhold.  She stopped just short of Last River.

Jon swallowed and glanced at Arya.  “The Dreadfort.”

Umber let out his breath in a rush.  “They passed right by Last Hearth!”  He laughed convulsively.  “Let them have what’s left of the Boltons and the Hornwoods!  We can muster at Winterfell and—“

Jon and the Thenn shared a glance.  He grimaced with regret.  “Lord Umber—“

The Thenn sneered, “Not pass by.”  She jabbed a finger at the sketch of Last Hearth’s walls on the map.  “Gone.  All walkers.”

Umber wrenched his sword from its scabbard, and the surrounding northmen leapt back.  “You’re a liar.”  He advanced on the woman, but the Thenn chieftains stepped into his path, their own blades bared.  “Those are our families!  You’re telling me they’re dead?”

Jon stepped between the Thenns and Lord Umber, both hands stretched out to placate.  “We don’t know for sure—“

“I’ll know!”  Umber turned to barge from the tent, but at a glance from Jon, the assembled lords and Wildlings closed ranks to bar his passage.  Ned whipped around, glaring dangerously and spitting with rage.  “You’d stop me from knowing if my kin lives or rots?  You’ll do nothing to protect your own bannermen?”

“You can’t go to them now.”  Jon turned to face him.  “If your men ride out to face the Walkers alone, you’ll just add your own men to the ranks of the dead.  If Last Hearth was spared, riding out to the castle could draw the attention of the dead, and they will fall on you and overrun the castle.”  Jon looked around at the grim faces surrounding him.  “We can’t beat the dead to Last Hearth, but we might be able to save what remains of the living at the Dreadfort.”

“Cowards!”  Lord Umber spat at Jon’s feet.  “You’d risk your lives to save traitors, but abandon Last Hearth?”

“I did not come here to be the queen of pyres and ash.”  Daenerys rose from the stool at the head of the table and surveyed the assembled lords evenly.  “Every living man, woman, and child in Westeros is endangered by this threat.  We must consider carefully the lives we will throw in the path of the dead and make certain they count.

“Lord Umber, we grieve with you, but I will not send my armies to defend a holdfast that may have already been overrun by the dead.”  She glared at Umber, and he turned his face away, twisted with bitterest disgust.  “Neither will I try to defend any holdfast that has no chance of standing against them.”

“What?”  Jon’s head snapped up, his features bald with shock.  “You won’t even try to defend the Dreadfort?”

Daenerys spread her hands across the map, scrutinizing it.  “I’ve learned the hard way when a position is indefensible.  Too much of the North is wide open space.  We need some place we can draw the dead in, force them into a tactical disadvantage.  Is there no place we could do this?”

“Aye.” 

Arya met Sandor’s eye over the heads of the other lords, and her heart throbbed in her throat.  She was certain she knew the place he had in mind.  “It’s so far . . . thousands will die if we try to lead them all the way there.”

“Thousands are going to die regardless.  If they have to chase us, we might have a chance of picking them off as they go.  The bigger question is how to get them to enter the chase.”

Daenerys’s delicate brows arched, and she glanced questioningly between Arya and Sandor.  “What did you have in mind?”

Together, they answered, “The Eyrie.”

The outburst was deafening.  Daenerys lifted her hand imperiously and waited several minutes until the cacophony died down.  She narrowed her eyes at Arya.  “Explain.”

“The North has been at war, both within and outside its borders for nearly a decade, and the Riverlands are little better.  We are too few, spread too far apart now.”  She indicated each fortress with the tip of her finger.  “The Dreadfort and Hornwood are almost empty after the Battle of the Bastards, the Boltons and Greyjoys nearly decimated Moat Cailin, and Walder Frey left only a skeleton force to hold the Twins when he took possession of Riverrun.”  She grinned wickedly up at Sandor.  “I personally made sure that every Frey at Riverrun who could hold a blade or bow was dead before I rode for Winterfell.  The Lannisters and the Mountain ravaged the Riverlands, and Harrenhall is an empty husk.  If we ride hard enough, we could evacuate what remains of the living ahead of the army of the dead.”

Jon objected, “That’s no way to wage a war!  We can’t run for hundreds of miles—“

“Thousands,” Sandor corrected grimly.

Jon gave him a filthy glare.  “—thousands of miles and just hope the dead will follow us.  We risk exhaustion, starvation, and the advance of winter ourselves hoping we can find a better position!”

“Use the vast emptiness and sparse population of the North to your advantage.  From White Harbor through the Neck,” Sandor traced a line across the map, “there’s no place to hide.  Pull the North back and send what remains of the Riverlands folk into the Westerlands.  If we could force the dead to chase us into the Vale of Arryn, there’s countless places where we could force the army of the dead into tight, deep passes where our forces could assault them from far above.”

Jon shook his head emphatically.  “It’s too big a risk.  We could get trapped at the top of those peaks ourselves with nothing but the sky above us and the dead below.”

“Fucking madness.”  Murmurs of assent rumbled through the tent.  Lord Glover continued, “Only a Lannister coward and an untrained girl would come up with such a brainless scheme.”

“We don’t have the numbers,” Grey Worm insisted.  “We will never have the numbers to defeat them in open combat.”

Some Karstark or other growled from the back of the tent, “What would you know about it, you cockless swine?”

“Grey Worm is right.”  Daenerys cut crisply through the growls and shouts of protest.  “With every battle, the dead only grow stronger, and we grow smaller.  If they catch us unprotected on the frozen moors, not even the Dothraki and Unsullied will be enough to repel them.”

Jon leaned heavily on the table and dropped his chin to his chest.  “We have no choice.  We will have to face them with the men we have.”

Daenerys blinked and smiled coldly.  “We always have a choice, and I will not commit my men to a course of action that will only add them to the ranks of the dead.”

Jon shook his head.  “It’s too big a risk.  It draws the dead too close to King’s Landing.  Even if we could evacuate the villages, what’s to stop the Night King from marching straight on to King’s Landing?”

Robett Glover snorted derisively.  “Might be doing us a favor if they did.  Let the Lannister cunts kill some of the fuckers, and the dead can get rid of Cersei for us.”

“You want to let the Night King add half a million men, women, and children to his ranks?”  Jon asked incredulously.  “If the dead make it to King’s Landing, Westeros is lost.  We’ll never be able to stop them.”

Tyrion’s eyes widened.  “Yes, we could.  Without dragons, without the Unsullied or the Dothraki, it could be done.  If you allowed the dead to swarm the walls of King’s Landing, you could destroy their entire army in a single stroke.”

Daenerys turned her penetrating glare on him.  “How?”

Tyrion glanced at Sandor’s face and grimaced.  “Wildfire.  Your father had vast stores of wildfire distributed in caches beneath all of King’s Landing, and I had the pyromancers make more.  ‘Burn it all.’  Those were his last words before my brother ran him through.  Prophetic, don’t you think, if burning King’s Landing to the ground is the only way left to save Westeros?”

“I came here to sit on the Iron Throne, not raze the capitol around it!”

Tyrion flapped his hand dismissively.  “Ugly fucking chair.  Forget the throne.  You said you wanted to break the wheel.  What better way to break the wheel than to destroy the city that is the symbol of everything it represents?”

“Westeros is its people, my Queen.”  Varys spoke softly, his hands clasped inside the broad cuffs of his fur-lined robe.  “If we can convince Cersei to evacuate King’s Landing, you will lose bricks, but save the mortar that holds this country together.”

Tyrion’s dark eyes peered from beneath his ragged locks.  “Once they see the threat, once they understand truly what is coming for them, they will forgive you.  Even a simpleton could see that this is a sacrifice worth making to save the living.”

Daenerys shook her head.  “Cersei will never abandon King’s Landing.”  She turned to Tyrion.  “Countless innocent people were murdered when she destroyed the Sept of Baelor in order to eliminate her enemies.  She won’t leave the security of the Red Keep.”

Jon pursed his lips and answered quietly, “She might, if she thought it was to her advantage.” 

He glanced around at the assembled lords and clan leaders.  Abruptly, he straightened.  “My lords, it grows late.  Thank you all for your council.  On the morrow we will continue our march south.  Regardless if we run from the dead or march to intercept them, there is no time to lose.  Sleep well, and we will reconvene tomorrow morning before dawn.”

Arya turned to go, but Jon grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.  “Not you.”  Jon glanced at Sandor, and he too waited.

Though the northmen were reluctant to leave what would evidently be a conclave between the advisors of the King of the North and the dragon queen, they finally cleared out. 

Daenerys lifted a brow expectantly at Jon.  “What advantage could Cersei find in abandoning King’s Landing?”

“If she abandons King’s Landing and pulls her army south into the Kingswood, we will be caught between the dead and her.  Our armies will have no place to go and be too exhausted to run any further.”

Daenerys frowned.  “And how will this benefit us?”

Jon looked squarely at Varys.  “The Lannisters have destroyed the ruling houses of the Stormlands, the Reach, and Dorne.  Surely someone has stepped up to fill the void in those lands?  She can’t have many friends south of the Crownlands.”

Varys cocked a brow and hooded his eyes beneath drooping lids.  “My little birds tell me that Paxter Redwyne and his sons have been very quietly gathering what remains of the Tyrell bannermen.  When word reached him of the destruction of the Sept of Baelor, he was in the Redwyne Straights.  He put in for supplies at the Arbor, and headed straight back to Sunspear.  He wasn’t able to return to the Reach before Highgarden was sacked, but now that he has returned, he is calling up what remains of the Tyrell bannermen.

“Sarella Sand has apparently taken her uncle’s place as the sole remaining princess of Dorne, even if she is a bastard.  She has quickly established order.  She is rumored to be exceptionally intelligent and resourceful, though somewhat less charming than her famed father.  When reason and diplomacy fail, her enemies find themselves the recipient of a poisoned dart.  She was all too pleased to receive Paxter when he arrived.

“The Stormlands are another matter entirely.  While the Baratheons have been biting and scratching to hold onto the Iron Throne, Cersei has paid little mind to what happened in her late husband’s ancestral homeland.  The steward of Storm’s End, Orrund Baratheon, is a distant cousin of Robert Baratheon, and is the only person of note who’s been able to create even a semblance of order.  Orrund has cobbled together a loose confederation of Baratheon bannerman based on the premise that Cersei had Robert murdered, and the deaths of her children are directly the result of her own greed and arrogance.  Interestingly,” he flicked his eyes at Daenerys, his lips twitching, “Orrund is said to resemble his Targaryen grandmother, right down to his long silver hair.  I think you’ll find him receptive to a possible alliance.”

Jon nodded.  “If the south could muster enough troops to enclose the Lannister forces and block their retreat, she’d have no place to go and would be trapped between us and them.”  He grimaced.  “Provided the dead could be lured into King’s Landing and destroyed by wildfire.”

“If, if, if.  So many ifs.”  Tyrion looked around at the gathered advisors.  “I don’t relish finding myself pinned between the dead and my sister.  Whether we try to draw the dead into the Eyrie or King’s Landing, aside from our walking corpses, what do we have that the dead could want so badly that they would chase us all the way south?”

“Me.”

Sam Tarly had trouble pushing the wheels of the chair through the sticky mud at the entrance to the King of the North’s tent.  He nodded in Jon’s direction, but was transfixed when his eyes fell on Daenerys. 

Her expression softened and she offered her sweet courtly smile.  “And you are?”

“Lord Tarly.”  Bran answered softly for him.

Sam looked confused.  “No, sorry, just Sam.  Sam Tarly.  I’m a brother of the Night’s Watch.”

“Not anymore.”  Bran pursed his lips and studied Daenerys.  “Lord Randyll Tarly and Dickon Tarly were executed by dragon fire when the Lannisters sacked Highgarden—“

Sam’s eyes widened.  “What?”

“—and since you’ve broken your Night’s Watch vows and abandoned your assignment at the Citadel—“

“Well, technically, I think you’ll find that what the words actually say—“

“—you’ll have to appeal for pardon to the King of the North before taking your place as the lord of House Tarly.”

Sam started.  “Pardon from Jon?”

Jon grimaced.  “The King of the North is bound to execute deserters of the Night’s Watch.”

“We’ve been travelling for days to get here.”  Sam goggled at Bran.  “You couldn’t have mentioned any of that before now?”

“Gentlemen.”  Daenerys’s smile had grown stale and fixed.  “If we could return to the matter at hand.  Just who are you and why would the dead want you?”

“He’s my brother, your Grace—“

Her brows shot up.  “Another Stark?  Will this one refuse to bend the knee too?”

Beneath his breath, Jon murmured, “Probably.”

“I’m the Three Eyed Raven.”  Bran said it with such finality that no one questioned him further.  He drew his sleeve back to reveal the place the Night King had touched him in his vision.  “The Night King will follow me because I can see him wherever he is, whatever he does.  He is coming.”

Daenerys took a deep breath and pursed her lips.  “So what do you propose?”

“It won’t be hard to clear the Riverlands or North of the living.  If you march on King’s Landing, the Night King will follow.  He knows that there is no greater concentration of the living in Westeros.  Whether you tell Cersei or not, she won’t abandon her position until it is too late.” 

“We have to tell her.  We have to try to save the citizens of King’s Landing.”

Bran’s lips twitched, and he drew his brows slightly together.  “You can try.  The Spider will have more success with his little birds, though.”

Bran turned his gaze pointedly to Arya.  “The dead won’t reach the Dreadfort until nightfall on the third day.  There is still time to save what remains of your people.”

Arya nodded curtly and strode from the tent, Sandor close behind her.  “What are you going to do?”

“My father would have died himself before he sat by and let northern lives be wasted.  I’m going to send  ravens to the Dreadfort and Winterfell . . . and then I’m going to ride for the Dreadfort.  Tonight.”

Darkly, he answered, “We.”

Arya glanced at him over her shoulder and nodded.  “We.  Get the men ready.”


	21. Shambles and Luck

After sending the ravens, Arya strode through the camp looking for Sandor and their men.  The soldiers were drunker and louder than usual.  She was nearly to the edge of the northern encampment when someone grabbed Arya and spun her to face them.  As she whipped around, she brought up her Valyrian dagger and dropped into a low, wide stance, prepared for attack.

“You’re a vicious little cunt ain’t ya?”  Ned Umber slurred.  “Where you off to in such a hurry, Lady Arya?”

Arya returned her dagger to its sheath and rose slowly.  She glanced around wearily to see if Umber was alone.  “That’s not your concern, Lord Umber.  I suggest you find your bed soon.  The king has planned a hard march tomorrow.”

When Arya turned to leave, Umber grabbed her again.  “Come back here.  Think you’re some kind of great lady, like Lady Sansa, don’t ya?  Heading off to save those good for nothing traitors at the Dreadfort?”  Umber raised his chin, and Arya heard blades slither out of scabbards around her in the night.  Arya glared at the hand on her wolfskin coat and slowly drug her eyes up to meet Umber’s.  “Greatjon always said the Starks were a slippery lot.  I don’t know what any of us expected from the kind of filth that would lay down with the Lannister dog.”

Suggestive murmurs of agreement echoed around her in the dark. 

“You know what I think?”  Umber dragged her closer.  “I don’t think you’re Arya Stark at all.  I heard Lady Arya was killed in King’s Landing, but then you turn up years later with the Hound licking at your heels.”

Arya opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Sandor’s deep growl.  “I think you’d better take your hands off my lady, or I’m going to take your hands off your arms.”

Around her, feet shuffled in the snow amidst muffled grunts.  Sandor materialized casually out of the night, his hands folded on the pommel of his long sword.

“Think you’re a hard man, Clegane?  Think you can take on all of House Umber by yourself?”

“Oh, I know I am, but you either turn my lady go, or House Umber won’t have to worry any more about what happened at Last Hearth.  My men will drag yours behind their horses all the way to the Dreadfort.  It’s not how they prefer to flay men—“ he bent lower into Umber’s face, “—it’s messy—“  Umber’s hand reached for his dirk, but Sandor grabbed it first.  He pressed the tip of the blade below Umber’s bloodshot eye.  “—but you’ll consider it a rare treat compared to what I’m going to do to you if you ever lay your hand on Arya Stark again.”

Ned released Arya and backed away.  “This isn’t over.  The king will hear of this.”

Sandor flung Umber’s dagger at his feet.  “Run along and tell him then.  Be sure to mention how you addressed his sister.  Irrun.  Rikard.”  The men Sandor had chosen from amongst the Dreadfort men to be their masters of bow and horse materialized from the dark beside him.  “Escort Lord Umber to the King of the North’s tent.  It’s a dark night.  I wouldn’t want him to get lost.” 

They watched Ned Umber stumble away between Irrun and Rikard. 

Sandor glanced down at her.  “Are you alright?”

Arya nodded.  “Lord Umber is young and hasn’t had the command of his house for long.  After what we heard tonight . . .”  She sighed.  “I just hope he doesn’t decide to take his men and ride to Last Hearth in the middle of the night.”

“There’s nothing we can do to save Last Hearth, but the Dreadfort still stands for now.”  He laid his hand on her waist and murmured, “Come on.”

* * *

The Dothraki weren’t happy about relinquishing the horses, but they did it.  Only forty of the Dreadfort men had ever been on a horse in their life, so Arya was forced to leave the rest of her men behind.  Lyanna Mormont spoke for them and promised to garrison them with her own men.

“My lady?”

Arya glanced down at one of the Dreadfort squires holding a spear with the Bolton colors tied on below the new Dreadfort colors.  “Vash, isn’t it?”

Even in the dark, she could see him blush richly.  “Aye, my Lady.  My mother, she’s at the Dreadfort.  Will you look for her?  Make sure she gets out alright?”

Arya smiled weakly.  “I’ll try.  What’s her name?”

“Sinda.  She was Lady Bolton’s maid.”

Arya leaned low out of her saddle and reached out her hand and Vash placed the spear into her hand.  She turned to hand the spear to another of the Dreadfort men.  “We’re going to try to get everyone out of the Dreadfort.  Is there anything you’d have me tell her if I find her?”

“Tell her . . .”  He cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure none of the other men would hear him.  “Tell her I love her.”

Arya smiled.  “I’m sure she already knows, but if I find her, I will tell her.”  Impulsively, she gripped Vash’s shoulder.  “Stay with the Mormont men and well away from the Umbers, Karstarks, and Manderlys.  We’re not very popular with them at the moment.  When I get back, I’m going to expect a report.  Do you understand?”  Vash’s eyes widened and he nodded furiously, his blond thatch flopping into his eyes.  “You’re my eyes and ears until I get back.”

Vash nodded solemnly and backed away from her horse.  When Arya turned, she found Sandor smirking at her.

“Finding your own little birds?”

Arya kicked her horse closer to Sandor’s and nodded to Rikard that she was ready.  “The men won’t trust us until they see we trust them, and I’d have an account of what happens while I’m gone from the mouths of my own men.”

* * *

When they finally arrived at the Dreadfort, they were exhausted, freezing, and spattered from head to foot with mud, but Arya was gratified to see the castle gates open for them when their colors were spotted.  She was less pleased once they rode into the courtyard.

She had expected to see the household already assembled, foodstuffs and vital supplies loaded into wagons.  Instead, only a pair of trembling stable lads greeted them

Arya reined in her lathered horse before them.  “Where is Maester Tybald?”

They looked at one another at a loss.  “Gone, milady.”

“The steward?”

“Dead, milady.”

Beneath her breath she cursed.  “Who is bloody well in charge of this fortress?”

“You are, milady.”

Sandor snorted, but Arya couldn’t tell if it was in amusement, derision, or disgust.  All three, probably.  She’d not expected to be admitted immediately to the castle, but neither had she expected such disorder.  She was disgusted.

“Sinda, Lady Bolton’s maid, is she here?”

One of the stable lad’s eyes popped.  “What you want with me mum?”

Gratified, she flashed a grin at Sandor, who simply grimaced skeptically.  “Vash sends his love.  I’d speak with her.  Take us to the great hall so we can get something to eat and out of the cold.”

It took better than an hour to sort out, but Arya finally wrung an account of the state of affairs from the Dreadfort household.  When Roose Bolton had abandoned the dank Dreadfort to take possession of Winterfell, he’d left less than fifty souls, mostly servants, to maintain the fortress.  With the maester gone and the steward having succumbed to a bout of bowel gripe, there had been no one to read the raven scrolls that had arrived for months.  When the few guards had recognized the Bolton colors beneath the new Dreadfort banner, they assumed that the Boltons had reconciled with the Starks and opened the gates without question.  Sandor had glowered darkly at the captain of the guard upon this news, and she suspected the captain’s ears would be burning with his disdain before the night was out.

Arya drummed her fingers on the table and looked at Sandor, her brows raised in silent query.  Pointedly, he rose from the table, opened a window, and peered out into the dark.  Arya sighed.  Whatever she was going to do, she needed to decide quickly.

“Sinda, can I count on you to manage the servants?”

She was a tidy woman perhaps ten years Arya’s senior, with kind eyes, a soft chin, and ashen blonde hair.  “Aye, milady.”

“Have them gather only what they cannot live without and can carry easily.  At first light, they are to set out for Winterfell.  What remains of the Dreadfort guard will take every horse in the stable, and they will escort you.  Take enough food and supplies to make the journey, but no more.  We can’t spare the time to empty the larders or granary.  With any luck, you’ll be back within the month. 

“Tell the kitchens I want every soul in the Dreadfort to break their fast here in the morning, and I want them well fed.  By midday, there must be no soul left within the Dreadfort.”

Sinda’s eyes were wide and her voice trembled.  “Very good, milady.” 

Arya nodded her dismissal, and she hurried away.

“Clegane?”  He turned from the window.  “See to the Dreadfort guards.  Send a quarter of our men with them, and instruct them to evacuate any settlement between here and Winterfell.  Make it clear that they are to do it gently, the Stark way, not the Bolton way.  After that, make sure our best riders have all the provisions they can carry.  We will ride south ahead of the Night King’s army.”

Sandor returned to her side and quietly said, “Aye, my Lady.  It shall be as you command.  Anything else?”

“Get our men garrisoned after they’ve their orders and provisions.  There’s plenty of room within the Dreadfort to quarter them.  When you’ve finished, come find me in the maester’s quarters.  I need to send ravens.” 

* * *

The maester’s quarters and library were a shambles, much like the rest of the Dreadfot.  They stank of mildew and the pungent acrid stench of bird droppings.  Arya lit the sconces on the wall as she proceeded into the library but recoiled when she saw that they made of human hands.  Hundred-year-old tomes were left broken in the narrow aisles between the sagging book shelves, and there was hardly a place she could place her muddy boot without treading on ripped pages and manuscripts.

When she reached the maester’s office and personal quarters, she found much the same.  One wall was ranged with raven cages, all empty.  Her own raven had likely flown off elsewhere when he wasn’t fed.  Arya sat down at the maester’s desk and considered the carnage.

She ran a finger over the edge of the desk and wasn’t surprised that it came away coated in filth.  Whatever had happened here had long since passed.  She was relieved that the maester’s quarters hadn’t been destroyed in the moments before her arrival.  Hoping to find something of value, she began trying to quickly set his desk to order.

When Sandor arrived an hour later, Arya had ranged a number of bottles along the edge of the desk.  He picked up one of the bottles and turned it in his hand.

“What’s this?”

Arya lifted her brow.  “That one is Myrish fire; take care you don’t get it on you.  Most of the rest are poisons.  The Boltons liked to do their killing the hard way, so I guess they didn’t use them much.  I couldn’t believe my luck when I found full vials of manticore venom, tears of Lys, long farewell, and demon’s dance.”  She creased her brow.  “The maester left behind his supply of sweetsleep and milk of the poppy.  He even had this . . .”  She tapped her finger on a particularly long thin vial.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a full vial of the Strangler.  You could buy a small homestead in Lannisport with this much Strangler.”

Arya started packing the vials into the satchel with her faces.  “You know what I didn’t find?  Ravens.  Ink.  Quills.  Parchment.  There’s not a single record of a raven scroll in the entire library or office that I could find.  They’ve all been taken or burned.  I found this though.”

Arya pushed a very old book that had been broken into several chunks towards Sandor.  “I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t tripped over it.  Some fool was tearing out pages and using them to light the maester’s fire.  Look here.”  Arya pointed halfway down the page.  “It says that the wights are bound to individual Walkers.  If you kill the commander, his wights fall.”

“Aye . . . That’s true enough.  That’s how we got our hands on a wight to begin with.”

“So why don’t we focus on just killing the commanders?”

Sandor flipped the pages of the book idly, glancing at the other pages.  He paused thoughtfully when he found a picture that looked exactly like Arya’s Valyrian dagger.  “Because there’s about a million wights between us and White Walkers.  The Walkers stay way back just like every other cunt of a commander.  There’s no way to get around them unless you are luring their vanguard somewhere, and the gods help whoever is on the receiving end of that.”

Arya drew her dagger from her belt and turned it over in her hands.  “You know, this is an assassin’s blade.”

“Aye?”

Arya balanced the knife by the tip and then flipped it.  “It’s perfectly balanced.  It doesn’t wobble when you spin it, and it flies true when it’s thrown.”

Not seeing the connection, he prompted, “Aye . . . ?”

Arya caught the blade deftly and returned it to its sheath in a single fluid motion. “That Unsullied said it himself.  We’ll never have the numbers to be able to meet them in the field, so why would we try?”  She grinned slyly up at Sandor.  “What if we let them walk right on by . . . and then assassinate their commanders?”


	22. Oaths and Honor

It was the small hours before Arya was satisfied that the entire household of the Dreadfort would be ready to move in the morning and a wizened crone showed Arya to her chambers.  Sandor opened the door for her and began to close it once she’d passed through.

Confused, Arya turned.  “Is there something else I’ve forgotten?  Whatever it is, it can wait until morning.”

Sandor glanced warily down the hall.  “No, my lady, but your men aren’t garrisoned in this wing.  It won’t do to leave you unguarded in the Dreadfort.  I’ll be at your door.”

“Like hell you will!  You can guard me the same way you do every other night.”

The corner of Sandor’s mouth twitched, and his eyes softened.  “Aye, I’d like nothing better, but it’s one thing for a great lady to share the tent of her shield for her safety while marching with an army.  It’s something else entirely for a man to share a woman’s chamber with a barred door between them and the rest of the castle.”

“I don’t care.”  She grasped the strap of his gorget and pulled him closer.  “It’s late and there’s no one to see.  Come to bed.”

Sandor braced his hand on the frame of the door.  “After your time in King’s Landing, you ought to know that in a place like this, even the walls have eyes.  If I cross this threshold, every man in the Dreadfort will know it by morning, and your honor will be ruined completely.”

She pulled the leather strap, and he bent lower to accept her kiss with a soft growl deep in his chest.  Arya pressed her forehead against his, the tip of her nose grazing the bridge of his. 

“I hear the whispers in the King of the North’s army, and I know you do too.  We’ve bigger concerns than what our men think of my honor.  You’ve been fighting and commanding men most of your life, and I need your experience and council.  You need sleep more than I need to pretend my virtue is intact.”

Sandor reluctantly bobbed his head in assent, and Arya released him.  She crossed the room to shutter the window, but couldn’t help gazing out over the moors and forest surrounding the Dreadfort.  Even at this distance, she could hear the Weeping Water purling over its icy banks.  It was too easy to imagine the shuffling footsteps of the dead instead.

After bolting the door, Sandor wrapped his arms around Arya and pressed a kiss into her hair.  Laying his cheek against her crown, he commented, “You did well today.  Your father would have been proud.  And your mother.  You are the great lady they raised you to be.” 

Arya turned into his arms and laid her head against his brigadine.  “Father was always proud of me, though I think my mother would have been glad to have me turned over a fence and beaten senseless most days!”  Sobering, she continued, “I hope it was enough.  I hope we can stay far enough ahead of the dead to save what remains of the North.  There’s so few of us left.”  She yawned broadly.  “By the Seven, I’m tired.  We have to be back in the saddle by dawn.”

“Aye, we should leave as soon as we can, but it doesn’t have to be dawn.”  Sandor tugged the straps loose on Arya’s pauldrons and laid them aside on the table.  He eased her away from him to remove her gorget.  “We rode hard.  Your brother said they wouldn’t reach the Dreadfort before nightfall.  So long as we are away by midday, we should have plenty of time to stay ahead of the Night King’s army.”  He began to gently massage Arya’s shoulders through her hauberk and kissed her crown of filthy hair.  “There’s time.”

Arya opened the clasps of his brigadine.  She wrapped her arms around Sandor’s waist and laid her cheek against his mail.  “Thank the gods.”

Arya explored the ruddy dark beneath her eyelids and went boneless beneath her lover’s touch.  After weeks in the cold, even the weak fire gave off a luxurious heat that was making her drowsy.  She knew she ought to shed the rest of her armor and find her way to bed, but she was reluctant to interrupt Sandor’s ministrations as his fingers kneaded their way down her spine.  Even with the dead bearing down upon them, she could imagine nothing finer in the world.

“Arya?” 

She felt the rumble of her name against her cheek, though his voice came from very far off.  “Mmm?”

“Arya, wake up.”

Arya blinked bleary eyes.  “Hmm?”

Sandor snorted in amusement.  “You may be able to sleep standing up, but I can’t.”

Arya peeled her face away from his mail and had to wipe away saliva that had trickled from the corner of her mouth.  “I’m sorry.  I just can’t keep my eyes open.” 

She sat heavily on the rickety chair by the fire and bent to remove her greaves and boots.  It was almost too much effort to sit back upright, so she cradled her head in her hands.  “I’d trade my Valyrian dagger for a bath, but now that we’ve made our way to a castle, there’s no one to draw it, and I’d probably drown if I got into a tub anyway.”

Sandor laid his brigadine and mail over the back of the other chair.  “It doesn’t matter.  We can bathe after the war.  If we live long enough to enjoy it.”

Arya lifted her head to look at Sandor, though it took real effort.  “It’s the first time . . .”  She felt warmth burn its way up her neck, so she turned her attention to loosening her sword belt.  She laid her blades on the table, and the gold band on her finger smoldered in the firelight.  “I was looking forward to a proper bed and a fire for once.”

The back of Sandor’s fingers grazed her cheek, but she was too shy to meet his eye.  “Aye, so was I, little wolf, but I’d rather neither of us fell from our horse tomorrow.”

After she wriggled out of her hauberk, Sandor offered his hand.  She couldn’t help but smile when she placed her scarred fingers in his.  His courtly manners would reappear at the strangest of times, and it never failed to amuse her.  She suspected he had noticed.

It wasn’t worth the effort to undress any further, so Arya crawled into the narrow bed in her sark and breeches beside Sandor.  The bed was too short for him, and it took several minutes of squirming before he found a comfortable position.  Once he did, Arya untied the neck of his sark and folded back the limp linen so that she could lay her cheek against his skin. 

“We may both fall off our horses tomorrow anyway . . .”  Arya yawned broadly, and it felt as though her jaw would unhinge.  Sleepily, she continued, “ . . . or be torn apart by the dead, so I’m going to tell you now . . .”

Arya drifted off to sleep for a few minutes.  She rose muzzily from their combined warmth and pressed a kiss to Sandor’s neck.  “I love you.  Before you die . . . you should know you were worth having.”

She fell immediately back to sleep, the crackling of the fire accompanied by her soft snores.

Sandor Clegane held Arya tightly against him, his jaw clenched as he stared at the deep shadows amongst the rafters of their room.  Into the dark, he murmured softly, “Now you fucking tell me.”

* * *

Arya awoke with a start, and would have bolted from the bed had Sandor’s arms not held her fast.  Dawn had come and gone, and still they were abed.

“Ssssh.  There’s time yet.  Try to rest while you can.”

Anxiously, Arya laid her head back on Sandor’s arm and tried to calm her racing heart.  He pressed a kiss into her hair and idly stroked his thumb across her belly.

“Do you remember what you said to me before you fell asleep?”  His voice was tight.

Arya turned her head into her shoulder.  “No . . . what did I say?  I barely remember falling into bed last night.”

He shrugged and pulled her closer.  “Never mind.  It doesn’t matter.” 

Sandor sought her left hand and held it so that he could see the wan light slide over his ring.  “I think of this sometimes, on your finger, and it . . . it warms me to know that it’s there.  You’re the lady you were meant to be now; maybe you shouldn’t wear this.  It’s sure to be noticed.”

Surprised, she asked, “You don’t want me to?”

“Aye, I want you to wear it, but it’ll bring you no end of grief if you do.”

Arya used her thumb to spin the band on her finger, noticing that it was less loose than it had been.  “I never thought to ask . . . you’ve never been married?”

He huffed in amusement.  “As if anyone would want me!  Even if I wasn’t such an ugly fucker, House Clegane is neither rich nor prestigious, and I’m a second son.  I spent most of my worthless life in service to the Lannisters.  Besides, after what happened to Gregor’s wives, no one would risk it.  People tend to think I’m the same, only smaller.”

“What happened to Gregor’s wives?”

Sandor didn’t answer immediately, instead tracing the delicate bones in Arya’s hand.  “I don’t know, exactly, but he never has them for long.  I met an old woman once who had been a servant at the keep, and she told me that her mistress had been there one day and gone the next.  The household had been too terrified to ask questions.  He damn near killed me over a toy.  Do you think he’d let his wife run off if he wasn’t done with her?  The only way people leave Gregor is in a box.”

 “You’re nothing like Gregor.”

“No . . . I’m not like him.  If I had a wife that wanted me, I’d keep her safe and close like a precious jewel.”  He kissed her softly.  “If she could stomach the sight of me, I’d never give her reason to want to leave me.”

Arya hummed her pleasure into his kiss.  Into his neck, she murmured, “I didn’t want to leave you the first time.  I’m not going to let you go again.”

“I wish it was that easy.”  He clasped her possessively in the small of her back.  “You said they could be back at the Dreadfort within a month . . . you may be right.  Now that they are on the march, the army of the dead won’t take long to overwhelm Westeros.  They don’t sleep, they don’t eat, they don’t tire. Within the month, we’ll both be dead or the Night King will be turned back.”

Sandor took a deep breath and held it.  Arya sensed there was more he wanted to say, but was unsure how to say it.  Finally, he rolled onto his back and continued, “Once the dead are dealt with, the King in the North will be looking for allies.  He will want to marry you to one lord or another to secure his throne.”  Arya sat up and stared at Sandor, stricken.  He smoothed her lank hair back from her face and hooked a lock over her ear.  “He’ll never give you to me.”  He sighed heavily and looked away.  “I can’t imagine what the bride price for a Stark wife would be.  I damn sure couldn’t pay it.”

Before Arya could respond, a tentative knock came at the door.  “My lady . . . my lord . . .”  Sandor cast Arya a dark glare that she shrugged off.  “The household is assembled in the great hall.  It’s time.”

Reluctantly, Arya rose from the warmth of their bed and turned to face Sandor.  “In a month, a year, whenever this is all over, I’ll still be your wolf bitch.  You’ll still have my blade at your back and my warmth in your bed.  By the old gods and the new, on my honor as a Stark, I swear it.”  She picked up Sandor’s long sword, which he’d hung from the bedstead the previous night, and offered it to him.  “Come on.  Debts are owed to the Many Faced God, and we’re going to go collect them.  Valar dohaeris.”


	23. Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone

“This is a cunt of an idea.”

Arya cocked a brow and glanced at Sandor in amusement.  “Maybe, but if it works, we could save thousands of lives.  Do you think this is far enough from the Dreadfort?”

He shrugged irritably.  “It’s hard to tell.  I doubt it will be hard to find their trail if they miss us though.  I just hope we can trust the Dreadfort men to do as their bidden.”  After a moment’s consideration, he added, “Without torturing, burning, flaying, or otherwise brutalizing anyone they come across.  It would be a shame to have to execute our own men.”

“I think they are smart enough to know that their lives will be forfeit if they don’t meet us at Hornwood in two days.”

Sandor had led them into a wood that wasn’t marked on any of the maps of the North.  As the horses plodded deeper into the wood, Arya was shocked to see the pines and firs give way to weirwood.  The gnarled white trunks seemed to go on and on, but eventually they reached a wide clearing with a narrow, shallow stream cutting its way through the snow.

“I’ve never seen a weirwood so big.  I can’t believe this isn’t on any of the maps.”

Arya reined in her horse beneath the largest of the weirwoods and dismounted.  When she approached the tree, nearly seven feet in diameter, she realized that a face had been carved into the trunk, but as it had grown, the face had turned away from the clearing.

She looked around to Sandor.  “This is a godswood,” she reached out her hand and placed it on the smooth white bark, “and this the heart tree.  This is where we are meant to wait.”

Sandor grunted his assent and tied the horses to a smaller weirwood a few yards away.  He watched her curiously over his shoulder.  “I’d not have guessed you for a religious woman.”

Arya walked around the tree, trailing her fingers across the bark.  “I met the gods in Braavos.  I saw things there that made me believe. 

“When I was a child, I didn’t go to the godswood much.  Sansa went with father all the time, but I wriggled out of it as often as I could manage.  I couldn’t see what all the fuss was; they were only trees after all.  Now, though . . . they call to me.  I feel them singing in my blood.”

When she came back to where the face had been carved into the heart wood, she knelt and laid her own beside it.  She closed her eyes and listened.  She didn’t hear words, exactly, only the sussurration of the wind in the leaves, but a sense of peace and heavy weariness settled over her.

“What do they say?”

She glanced up at him.  “It’s safe here.  The dead won’t pass the Dreadfort for many hours yet.  We should sleep while we can.”

“You sleep.  I’ll keep watch.”

“No.”  Arya’s answer came sharper and more adamant than she’d intended.  “We both need to sleep . . . we need the visions we will see while we sleep here.”

Sandor froze and a distant look came into his eyes.  “I don’t know the gods.  I know the Seven couldn’t be bothered to stop a couple of cunts from murdering good people building a sept.  Thoros and Beric, though, they believed.  We both saw Thoros bring Beric back after I’d near cut him in two . . .”  He glanced up.  “They made me look into the fire once.  I didn’t want to, but I did . . .”

“What did you see?”

“I saw the dead on a mountain shaped like an arrowhead.  We found the wight we took to Cersei because the Lord of Light showed me where to go.  I saw . . .”  Sandor looked intently at Arya.  “ . . . other things that keep me going.”  He broke off, obviously reluctant to elaborate, and she didn’t press.

Arya took a deep breath and looked up into the canopy of the heart tree.  “When we were children, my brothers and I, we would often have the same dream.”  She picked up a small, perfect weirwood leaf and smoothed it on her knee.  “Not similar dreams . . . the same dream.  Bran would sometimes know which day a mare would birth or when a stranger would show up.  Sometimes we would wake up together in odd places, sometimes the catacombs, sometimes the godswood . . . it happened so often that we just thought it was the way of children.”

Sandor’s eyes were haunted.  Uneasily, he nodded his assent.  “They are your gods and this is your place.  If you say we must sleep, we’ll sleep, but who’s going to wake us before the dead slaughter us?”

Arya looked up at him.  “Bran will.”  She had been surprised when the words passed her lips, but as soon as she spoke them, she knew they were true.  She laid down in a depression of the earth between the gnarled roots of the heart wood that was drifted with eons of fallen leaves.  “Come.  Keep me warm.”

* * *

Sandor stalked through the endless weirwood, and beneath the dense canopy of crimson leaves, all was shadow and blood and snow.  He knelt beside the stream, but a thick rime of ice had formed over it.  He drew his dagger, slammed the pommel through the ice, and scooped out a mouthful of water.  As he drank, the water grew warm and salty, and when he looked into his palm, instead of water, there was blood.

Revolted, he wiped his hand in the snow.  He looked again into the stream, and it had turned into blood, burbling sluggishly between the icy banks.  There on its surface, though, he saw the reflection of a face snarling up at him.  When Sandor raised his eyes, a crone stood before him wrapped in a woolen gown and cloak of deepest blue.  When she lowered her hood, his breath clotted in his throat.

She’d once been a handsome woman with high, aristocratic cheekbones and rich auburn hair carefully plaited back from delicate features.  He remembered her tight hard smile and how her icy glare could almost peel the flesh right off your bones as she raked it across you.  Her eyes were bluer, and nothing but malice lurked in their depths.  Her now white locks straggled limply from what had once been an elaborate braid, and hair had been torn out in chunks leaving wide swaths where her scalp, nay her skull, was visible.  Long, oozing gouges ran down her ashen cheeks where the flesh had been clawed away. 

He’d only seen her the once, at Winterfell, but she was the type of woman you didn’t forget, especially when it was her smile echoed on his lover’s lips every morning, the same narrowing of the eyes when he crossed blades with Arya. Sandor scuttled backwards, panicked, as the late Catelyn Stark advanced on him, spitting with rage.

She flung out her arm at him, and he thought Catelyn intended to slice his face open with her ragged nails.  She sneered and mouthed at him, though no words poured forth issued from her mouth. 

Catelyn pressed one of her withered claws to the gaping wound at her throat, and he could barely hear her hiss, “Get up, you worthless dog!”  When he made no move to respond, Catelyn wrapped one icy, bony hand around his wrist and drug him to his feet with the strength of five men.  “Get up, damn you!  She needs you!”

Sandor started awake, drenched in sweat and alone.  The last melancholy wisps of day were fleeing beneath the canopy of the weirwood.  As quietly as he could manage, he crept through the wood, still trembling from his dream and fighting down panic and nausea writhing in his belly.  He found Arya’s tracks marked out clearly in the snow at once, and he followed them.

As he neared the edge of the wood, fingers of mist dissipated before him, and he chased the fog, anxious to find Arya before the dead did.  He stumbled blindly, and fetching up against a fir, he squinted into the swirling white.  When the moon crested from behind a cloud bank, it revealed a White walker on his undying steed, perhaps only a hundred yards away.

Sandor scanned the dense mist for Arya.  While he didn’t see her, he did see her prized Valeryan dagger shearing through the air.  He held his breath, watching to see if the blade would find its mark.  At the last instant, the Walker turned his head in their direction, jerked his reins, and the blade sank deep into the horse’s neck.

Arya’s footsteps shattered the silence as they crunched through the snow.  Sandor raced in the direction he thought he heard her, but within the dense fog, sound ricocheted strangely around him.  One moment, it sounded as though she was right in front of him, but then a moment later, the sound of her running feet would come from twenty yards to his side.  He flailed around in the dark and the mist, trying to determine which way she had gone.

Without warning, the mist drained away, and before he had time to react, the dead were upon Sandor.  He barely had time to wrench his long sword from its scabbard before a wight was upon him. 

“Sandor!”

With the mist cleared and the moon filtering through the trees, Sandor finally caught a glimpse of Arya barreling towards the godswood.  He set off after her, but had to fight his way through snow and unsure footing as much as the endless army of the dead. 

Arya’s shriek of pain echoed and bounced off the trees, and the wights surrounding him paused for the briefest instant, several turning their heads.  Pushing and cutting his way past them, for a moment, he saw her, and his heart stuttered and threatened to stop altogether. 

The Walker was advancing on Arya, his long ice blade arcing towards her like a scythe.  As ever, her Valyrian blade was tight against her spine as she danced away from each of his strokes, grinning manically at him.

_Gods, woman, get that damn sword up!_

Had he been watching the wights more closely, he would have noticed it at once.  Instead, he was so focused on reaching Arya that Sandor didn’t register that they had turned and were rushing back to their master.  In horror, Sandor could only watch as the possessed forgot their attack upon him completely, raised their blades, and flew across the ice towards Arya. 

Sandor could barely keep up with them, and he swung his blade indiscriminately, hoping to cripple the few he could reach.  It wasn’t enough.  He was going to lose her.  Right here, in the sight of the old gods, in the very groves where northmen had prayed for centuries, the Stranger was going to steal her away from him.

The dead had amassed in a writhing knot, each wight pushing and shoving, trying to enter the fray.  Sandor’s sword whistled through the air as he mowed them down like a stand of saplings.  Many fell, but they continued to ignore him.  There always seemed to be two more to replace each one he cut down. 

Occasionally, the throng would part for an instant, and Sandor would catch sight of Arya, slashing frantically with her father’s reforged blade.  He wanted to call out to her, wanted her to know that he was trying desperately to reach her, but he was terrified of distracting her.  Only a dozen paces separated them, but it may as well have been a league.  Her teeth were gritted together, and her smile was gone.

Suddenly, there was a deafening screech that shook the delicate needles on the trees, and the dead collapsed.  Arya was there in their midst.  Her brigadine was practically shredded, and some of the steel plates were scattered and glinting in the snow at her feet.  The pauldrons and gorget he’d insisted on, that Arya had resisted for days, were dented and smeared with blood.  The sleeve of her hauberk had practically been ripped from her sword arm.  Her mail swung in tatters, blood coursing down her arm and steaming where it pooled in the snow.  One of the dead had raked their nails across Arya’s cheek, and deep gouges oozed blood down her neck.

Arya’s eyes, clouded with exhaustion and pain, found him.  She grinned weakly and said, “You were right, that was a cunt of an idea,” before crumpling into the snow.

Later, Sandor didn’t remember leaping over the dead and scooping Arya out of the snow.  He didn’t remember sheathing his own sword and collecting her precious Valyrian blade.  All he remembered was running through the seeming endless weirwood, with its bizarre white trunks and bloodied leaves, the branches hanging low and snatching at his hair and cloak.  It seemed as though he ran for hours through the snow, his heart only consenting to beat when he saw Arya take another breath.

When he found the horses, he threw Arya’s wolfskin cloak on the ground at the foot of the heart tree and laid her on it.  She groaned softly but didn’t open her eyes. 

Arya clung to his neck and refused to release him.  “Don’t go.”

Sandor knelt in a drift of weirwood leaves and gently pried her hands away.  “I’ll be damned in the lowest of the seven hells before I leave you, but if your Many Faced God is calling your name, you tell him to go fuck himself.”

Arya laughed breathily and groaned.  “Gods, don’t make me laugh.”

“Tell me where it hurts.”

“Everywhere.”

Sandor sat on his heels and struggled with the buckles and clasps of Arya’s armor.  Every inch of her looked to be smeared with blood and muck, but he couldn’t tell if any of her injuries were serious.  Her breath came in gasps and wheezes.  The fear of watching her die right there in front of him threatened to choke Sandor.  In desperation, he finally resorted to just cutting away the straps.

“The fuck are you doing?”  Arya asked weakly.  “Gendry will have to put new ones on—“

Irrational rage boiled up suddenly inside him.  “Fuck Gendry, and fuck you too!  I’d rather see you in the Black Cells than fighting your way out of the dead again!”  Sandor fought his anger back down and tried to stuff it deep into his belly.  Beneath his breath, he muttered darkly, “Stupid fucking wolf bitch.”

“Sandor—“

“Shut the fuck up.”

By the time he’d torn off the plate, Sandor’s hands were shaking too badly to try to cut through the lacings of Arya’s ruined brigadine.  Instead, he ripped through the strip of leather that held it closed with his bare hands and pulled off her mail.  Unbelievably, the padded jacket and sark beneath were drenched in sweat, but free of blood.  All of the blood seemed to have come from Arya’s face and a particularly nasty gash that had caught her just below her left pauldron.

In deepest relief, Sandor crushed Arya to him and sobbed against her throat.  Weakly, she shushed him and threaded her fingers into his hair.  After everything that had been done to him, after everything he’d seen, after all the people he’d had to kill to survive, it really was the lost Stark girl who was going to break him after all.

When Sandor finally released her, Arya sat back on her heels and eased stiffly out of her padded jacket.  She raised the hem of her sark and hissed when she saw the livid bruises blooming over her ribs.  “I think I’ve got a couple of broken ribs, but I’m fine oth—“

Sandor stopped her words with a brutal kiss.  He didn’t want to hear that she was fine or about how he’d ruined her armor.  He didn’t want to remember seeing Arya disappear behind a hundred writhing wights, all trying to tear her flesh from her bones and send her to the Stranger.  He didn’t want to remember carrying her limp body through the weirwood, afraid that every breath would be the last.  He didn’t want to acknowledge the crippling, nauseating terror that had built inside him when he thought Arya was lost.  He didn’t want to think about the fact that as soon as she could sit a horse and swing her sword, she was going to try it again.

Sandor held her face between his palms and smeared away the blood from the gouges in her cheek.  The world seemed to spin crazily, and the night was brittle, about to shatter around them.  Thoughts tumbled dizzyingly through his mind, and his heart was a wineskin stretched almost to bursting.

In the brief time that she had been his, Sandor had spent nearly every day actively fighting the onslaught of emotions that built within him.  At first, there had been relief that the little wolf bitch had survived.  He saw the scars, etched in her flesh, in the steel of her eyes, in her cold smile, of the things that had happened to her because he hadn’t been there to shield her.  He thought he’d die of the shame. 

When he nursed Arya back to health, Sandor had tried to deny the satisfaction that came with having someone to care for, someone that needed and relied on him.  He had tried to ignore the warmth he felt when they bitched and bickered at one another.  He had tried to justify the blinding rage he’d felt when the Thenn had tried rape her and the ache and emptiness he’d felt when he had rode off and left Arya behind. 

That first time when he made love to her, he had been dumbstruck that any woman would welcome him to her bed, sigh in his ear and clutch him to her.  When Arya seemed to genuinely desire him, even that he’d tried to explain away.  Sandor had told himself Arya was repaying the countless blood debts between them.  He told himself that he felt only lust for her, desire slaked in a beautiful young woman.  He told himself it wasn’t real.  Sandor had told himself thousands of lies, whatever it took to convince himself that what had risen between them was nothing. 

Eventually, Sandor couldn’t lie to himself anymore, and he had to admit to himself that there was more between them than friendship or partnership or lust.  He’d lay awake for hours, memorizing the soft curves pressed against him, the precise length and breadth of her, the sweet weight and rhythm of her swaying body as she rode him, the shadows cast upon her cheek by her lashes, the translucence of her porcelain skin in the moonlight, the throb of her pulse in her throat.  He’d recall her tiny hand anchored by her mouth before she let fly her arrow, the way her eyes narrowed when she’d decided to kill, and brightness of her laugh.  Sandor had catalogued all of this and stored it away, surety against the nights that he knew he’d someday have to weather without Arya.  He tried to prepare himself against the inevitable day that she’d leave, ride away and take the best of him with her.

Then the wights had come, and they had tried to take Arya from him.  Sandor screwed his eyes shut and tried to push the thought away.  Shattering fear transmuted into a searing desire of equal intensity. 

Gentle kisses of reassurance turned into deeper kisses that at first asked, and then demanded.  Arya had always felt so small, so delicate between his massive paws, and he’d always been so careful when loving her.  He had been terrified of hurting her.  This time he needed affirmation of her strength, feel for himself that she was still whole.  He wanted to feel her writhe and hear her moan.

He kissed his way down Arya’s throat, and when his questing mouth found the edge of her sark, he tore it away, only distantly registering the ragged snarl of damp linen shredding.  Arya gasped when he sank his teeth into her shoulder.  He bunched the cloth in his hands before savagely ripping the sark, splitting it down Arya’s back.  Sandor tossed it aside and spread burning hands across her back.

“Sandor?”  Arya trapped his face between her hands and searched his eyes.  He panted, struggling to reign in his terror and pull back his blazing desire before he shattered the woman who inspired both. 

“Fucking wolf bitch!”  He kissed her again, plunging his tongue into her mouth.  Arya gasped for air when he drew back.  “I’ll kill you myself if you ever do that again.  If you laugh in the Stranger’s face again like that, he’ll see what you are and want you for himself.  He can’t have you!  Do you hear me?”  He held her shoulders in an iron grip and gave her a little shake.  “You’re mine!”

Sandor distantly registered tracks of ice cutting their way down his cheeks to his beard.  He sobbed as he kissed Arya again, taking his breath from her gasps.

Arya broke away from him again, her eyes blazing.  “Sandor!  Look at me!”  She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he reveled in the softness and bareness of her body even through mail and brigadine.  “I am yours and you are mine.”  She glared at him.  “Say it!”

Sandor sucked in a shuddering breath.  She’d said perhaps the only thing in the world that would have snapped him out of his black haze.  “Those are sacred words.  I’d not have them from you unless you mean them.”

“Give me your hand.”

As though in a daze, Sandor offered her one of his hands.  Arya unwrapped a long strip of buttery leather from around her wrist before lacing her fingers into his.  She wrapped the strip of leather around both of their hands.

Arya glared at him.  “Say the words.”

“Uhh . . . if I may, he’s supposed to wrap you in his cloak first, and under the circumstances, I . . . I think that would be best.”

Sandor blinked stupidly up at the fat Night’s Watch brother.  He’d completely forgotten that a handful of soldiers would be following the vanguard to search for survivors in the wake of the army of the dead and burn those who had fallen.

“Sam, you’re interrupting.”  The Wildling woman who seemed to never be more than a few steps behind Tarly set down her son in a drift of weirwood leaves.  She shot Sam an exasperated glare as she unclasped Sandor’s cloak from his throat and wrapped it around Arya’s shoulders.  “Are you happy now?  The old gods don’t need all those words, or the witnesses neither.  They were doing just fine before we came along.”

Sandor rose on his knees and pressed Arya against him.  Though he still ached for her, the intensity of his need had altered, and the interruption had brought him to his senses.

Into her ear, he murmured softly, “I’m sorry.  I was . . . it doesn’t matter.  You don’t have to do this.”

Arya flexed her fingers between his and tightened her grip.  She growled, “If you want me, then say the words.”

“Let’s begin again, shall we?”  Tarley lifted his brows expectantly.  “Lady Arya, will you take this man?”

Arya laid her free hand against the ruined side of Sandor’s face.  He closed his eyes and pressed his cheek into her palm.  His heart beat in his throat and he begged the gods that Arya would take him, all the while bracing himself for the likelihood that before her gods, before witnesses, she would not.

Softly, Arya whispered, “Sandor, look at me.”  When he opened his eyes, she offered him a tremulous smile and said, “I will take this man.”  She squeezed his hand and continued on to recite the vows of the Seven under whom Sandor had been named.  “Father, Smith . . .”

Sandor swallowed hard and raced to catch up with his unlikely bride’s vows. “Father, Smith . . .” 

Together, they named, “Warrior, Mother, Maiden, Crone . . .” and finally, reluctantly, they intoned, “Stranger”.

“I am hers and she is mine . . .”

“I am his and he is mine . . .”

“From this day, until the end of my days.”

Arya lifted her face and accepted his kiss, and Sandor was flooded with relief.  Before the gods, before witnesses, she was his.

“My Lord, my Lady,” Tarly knelt in the snow beside them, “I’m so sorry, but we’ve got to go.  When the Walkers realize we’ve killed one of their commanders, they will return, and we’d best not be here when they do.”  He grimaced apologetically and offered Arya her Valyrian dagger.  “Congratulations . . . but get on your horses and get the fuck out of here.”


	24. A Father's Promise

Arya and Sandor rode from the weirwood as though the dead were clawing at their heels.  It took all of her strength to grip the tireless Dothraki stallion beneath her.  The trees whipped past in a blur, and the wind tore tears from her lashes, blinding her.  Arya relinquished control of her horse, trusting it to follow wherever Sandor led them.

Trying desperately to flank the army of the dead, Sandor didn’t permit them to stop for many hours.  Her mind numbed by exhaustion, time seemed to have no meaning, and she could no longer comprehend anything beyond the punishing rhythm of the beast beneath her and its mane slicing at her eyes and cheeks. 

Several times she came inches from falling from her horse.  Every time she did, Sandor would stop, collect a handful of snow and scrub it over Arya’s face until she was alert enough to continue their flight.  When they were only a few hours’ ride from Hornwood, he even resorted to dropping handfuls of snow down her back.  She was wracked with violent, convulsive shivers for the last miles, but the pain and bone rending cold kept her alert enough to cling to the saddle.

When he spotted their men, Sandor grabbed the bridle of her horse to slow him.  He slid gracefully out of his saddle and caught her when she rolled bonelessly off her own mount.

Irrun rushed to his side.  “Is milady hurt?”

Sandor brushed past.  “It’s nothing sleep, dry clothes, and food won’t fix.  Find her something to eat while I set up a tent.”

Irrun took a long look at Sandor and Arya, the way her face was pressed into his neck and how she’d wreathed her arms around his shoulders.  Tentatively, he offered, “You stay with milady.  I’ll set up the tent.  The men will start a fire—“

“No fire.”  Sandor settled on a downed tree.  He accepted a skin of sour wine and a small loaf of coarse brown bread from one of the swordsmen and offered them to Arya.

When Irrun opened his mouth to question the command, Sandor elaborated, “The dead will be drawn to it.  I’ve seen it.  You light a fire, and we’ll be dead before morning.  Sleep four men to a tent if you must to stay warm, but no fire.”

* * *

Arya felt as though the earth would swallow her as she crawled the few feet to lay her head on her new husband’s shoulder.  They could only steal a few hours sleep before they would have to take to the road again to try to regain their lead on the Night King.

She had nearly sunk into the leaden arms of sleep when Sandor murmured, “I’m sorry.  This isn’t how you should be spending your wedding night.  You deserve better.”

Arya cleared her throat and shifted beside him, her mail rasping sharply against his.  “After father died and I went to Braavos, I never thought I’d have a wedding night at all.  We’re both alive.  That’s enough for tonight.”  She was unable to stifle a deep yawn.  “We can celebrate after the war, right after that bath you promised me.”

Sandor didn’t seem to hear her.  He was staring fixedly at the canvas above them.  “I’d have liked to have seen you in a silk gown, Winterfell lit up like the Mother’s Festival, and your kin with their horn cups raised—“

Arya wrinkled her nose but smiled.  “I don’t like dresses.”

“Aye, but I’d have liked to have taken it off of you.”

Arya rubbed the grit from her eyes, becoming more alert.  “No bedding ceremony?”

“You’re the only thing of value I’ve got in the world.  You honestly think I’d share you?  Seems like too much temptation to run a man through on my own wedding day.”

Arya laughed sleepily and stretched.  “My father said something similar.  He forbade a bedding ceremony after his own wedding.”

“He was a good man, your father.  I’d have liked to have had Eddard Stark’s approval before wedding and bedding his daughter.”

Arya sought Sandor’s hand in the dark and laced her fingers between his.  “He promised to marry Sansa and me to worthy men who were brave and gentle and strong.  He said someday my sons would be knights and lords.”

Softly, bitterly, he answered, “Well, you got strong at least.”

“I got the rest too.”  She stretched her neck to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

Sandor turned his head and pressed his long nose against hers.  “It’s likely to be a short union.  The dead may take one or both of us in the morning.  They made a damn credible attempt already today.  I’d have liked to have had you just once without the shame of knowing I was taking something that wasn’t mine.”  He slid his hand up her hip and under her tunic to spread his hand over the sensitive, scarred flesh of her belly.  “I’d have liked to have filled my pretty young wife with my seed and started my son in her belly before the Stranger tore me away from her.”

Arya grimaced sadly.  “That might be another pretty fantasy.  I’ve no idea if I could even conceive after what the waif did to me.”

Sandor took her face in his cavernous hands and kissed her sweetly.  “It doesn’t matter if you can or can’t.  The Stranger will probably take us before winter’s over, but I’d not go to him without at least trying.

“You said the Many Faced God gave me back to you, and you were days from dying when I made you go to the maester.  There must be a reason he keeps giving us back to one another.  Do you really think he’ll take us now that we’ve pledged ourselves to one another before the gods?”

Arya ground her molars together.  “Not today.”  She kissed her husband fiercely.  “Not.  Fucking.  Today.”

Arya rose on her knees and began to pull off her snug mail, but Sandor stopped her with a hand on hers. 

Kneeling beside her, he murmured, “Not this time.”  He held her face and kissed her gently.  “Every time I’ve touched you, I’ve known you weren’t mine.  This time you are, and I’d claim you the way a woman ought to be claimed on her wedding night.”

Arya had no idea what that meant.  Nervously, she allowed him to guide her hands back to her sides.  Though she could barely see him in the velvety dark, she heard the clasps of his brigadine being loosed and the soft thump it made when he tossed it aside somewhere near the mouth of the tent.  This was followed a few moments later by the slithering of his mail sliding off his back, and it chinked softly as he tossed it aside as well.  When he knelt beside her again on their furs, he was bare.  Arya swallowed thickly, and her desire stirred slowly even though she had been too tired to keep her eyes open a few minutes earlier.

Arya reached for him, but before she could lay her hand against his chest, he caught it and pressed a kiss against the tip of each icy finger.  “No.  This time, you’re mine to claim.” 

He took her thumb into his mouth and sucked at it gently.  The gesture was surprisingly intimate and possessive, the softness and warmth of his tongue evocative and inviting.

Sandor released her hand and clasped her hips firmly.  When he pulled her closer, she could feel the length of him, pressed hard and quivering against her.  Arya’s breath caught in her throat, and he captured her mouth, kissing her deeply, and releasing her only after sucking hard on her lip, his teeth tugging slightly at it.

Arya was becoming dizzy, but whether from desire or exhaustion, she wasn’t sure.  She smiled and asked, “Are you going to return that bite I gave you?”

“No.”  Gently, Sandor sucked on her earlobe, his breath moist and warm.  “I’ll never hurt you if I can manage it.”  He spread one broad hand across her back and lifted her chin so he could kiss her neck.  “I told you . . . if I had a wife that loved me . . . I’d never give her reason to leave me.”  Against her skin, he asked softly, “Do you love me?”

Slowly, unsure if he’d permit it, Arya brought her arms around him.  Sandor nudged aside the collar of her sark and hauberk to suck gently at her shoulder.  She laid her head against his and sighed, “Yes.”

Sandor smoothed his hands up Arya’s ribs and lifted her arms away from his shoulders, stretching them high above her head.  He released her hands with a gentle squeeze and then removed her tattered hauberk and tossed it aside with his.  He untied the neck of her sark and opened it so that it barely clung to her shoulders.  Arya shivered in the cold and her nipples rose tight and hard.

Again he claimed her mouth, bending her head far back so that her body was pressed against his.  He stroked the back of his fingers down her throat, and his kisses followed the path of his hands.  He cupped her breasts, at first trailing his thumbs gently over her chilled flesh, stroking his warmth into her body, and then firmly squeezing them.  Arya’s breath quickened, and Sandor wrapped an arm around her waist, pressing her hard against him.  He rolled one of her nipples firmly between his thumb and finger, sending a flush of pleasure through her body.  She let out a little squeak of desire, and twisted her hips against him.

Sandor released her and clasped her hands.  Thickly, he gently demanded, “Stand up.”

When she did, he wrapped both of his arms around her and took the nipple into his mouth.  At first, he only flicked it with his tongue, but as her breathing became more ragged, he took it deep into his mouth, and suckled her.  Arya wrapped her arms around his head, both steadying herself and pulling him deeper into her body. 

Sandor’s hands bunched in the linen of her sark, and she was afraid he’d tear it.  “Wait!” she panted. 

He sat back on his heels, and she could just make out his features as he gazed up at her, his raw need evident. 

Arya bent and kissed him.  “It’s my last sark.  If you tear this one, I’ll have nothing to wear beneath my jacket!”

He grinned wolfishly, and as soon as she’d drawn off the sark and tossed it aside, he pulled her close, untying her breeks and kissing his way down her belly.  Arya closed her eyes, allowing herself to ride the sensations that flooded through her as her husband divested her.  She swayed like a reed, her head brushing the top of the tent while her body was anchored by his steely strength.  She relished the icy air biting at her skin, acute where his kisses and tongue had left a moist trail.  It was a stark contrast to the fire that burned within her and the blaze of her husband’s touch.

Arya stepped out of her breeks, and Sandor’s palms followed the curve of her legs, caressing her thighs and squeezing her buttocks.  Arya’s legs were becoming weak with desire, and she steadied herself on Sandor’s shoulders.  She gasped as he trailed his blunt fingers slowly between her thighs.  When he slid a thick, burning finger into the slick folds of her body, she moaned softly.

“You’re my wife,” Sandor’s voice ground over the word, thick with the wanting, “but I’d still not have you without you wanting me.” 

He continued stroking her, circling around the bud of her desire, delving deep into her body and slowly increasing the pressure and speed with which he caressed her.  His voice and his touch had become the boundaries of her world, and she wantonly spread her legs farther to encourage her husband to continue.  When Sandor bent his head and licked tantalizingly at her moist lips, she cried out softly and her knees nearly buckled beneath her.

Smiling up at her with deepest satisfaction, Sandor guided her back to their furs.  Again, he returned to tasting her, licking and stroking and sucking until she had to bite hard on her fingers to prevent herself from crying out.  In the frenzy of her desire, she caught his hand and drew him up to her.  She sought his mouth and demanded his wet, musky kiss.  When she slid her hands down his body, aching to touch him, he caught her hands and pulled away.

“Not this time.  I’ll keep you and honor you until my last breath.  I’ll bend the knee to your brother.  I’ll obey your command as my lady, but in the dark between us, you are mine.  This time,” he kissed her hard to make his point, “I’d have my wolf bitch submit to her hound.”

Arya shared a long, dark look with her husband before laying slowly back into their furs.  “I am yours and you are mine.”  Holding his gaze, she spread her legs for him, so wide that her hips ached, and still she opened them further.  “Come and claim your wife.”

When Sandor entered her, it was with a hard deep thrust that filled her to the point of splitting.  She gasped and clung to him as he drove into her.  For the first time, Sandor allowed his desire full reign.  Arya struggled to meet his pace, and when she faltered, he captured her hips and held her, blindly driving harder and faster into the depths of his beloved. 

The sudden pain she’d felt at his initial deep penetration quickly faded to a dull ache.  His groans of desire and sighs of pleasure echoed sweetly in her ears, and her own desire rose to a fevered pitch to match his own.  The dull burn within her was quickly replaced with writhing, demanding desire for him.  Soon she was grasping at his shoulders, urging him with her own groans and the renewed grinding of her hips to delve ever deeper.  She reveled to find rich satisfaction in her submission, and she ached to make it complete, to make him whole with his conquest.

“Sandor . . .”

He gave her a deep bruising kiss without slowing his onslaught.  Sandor broke away panting, “By the gods, Arya . . .”

When he spoke her name, Arya felt her own desire peak and balance precariously.  Her body tightened around him, and he groaned in gratification.  Sandor slammed his body into hers, grunting with the effort, and Arya shattered blindingly.  She clutched his slick shoulder and rode wave after wave of pleasure as she clenched and pulsed around him, gasping into his neck.  Suddenly, Sandor froze above her and moaned softly.  He held her tightly and kissed her mouth and cheek clumsily.  She relished his searing desire convulsing within her, her thighs slick with the wanting and having.  Sandor stayed deep within Arya long after he’d poured out every drop of his seed, and when he finally withdrew, she missed the feel of him filling her.

When Arya laid down in her husband’s arms, he gently wrapped her in the dire wolf pelts.  She fell asleep, exhausted and replete, almost instantly.  He woke her again, only an hour later, with feather soft kisses, murmers of his love, and caresses light as a whisper.  This time he loved her gently and dissolved into her embrace within only a dozen strokes.  When Arya woke blearily the next time, it was to the stomp of horses and the jingle of bits, and she knew their men were rousing in preparation of resuming their flight from the dead.

In her sleep, Arya had turned away from Sandor, though his arms were still wrapped tightly around her.  As she stirred, he pressed kisses to her neck, and she felt him rigid against her.

She smiled and stretched leaden, weary muscles against his luxurious warmth.  “Mmm, again?  Any more, and I may not be able to sit my horse.”

Huskily, he murmured, “Aye, I need you again.  I may only have a few days to fit a lifetime of loving my wife.  I want you to know you were well and thoroughly loved.”  Tenderly, Sandor encouraged Arya to turn and face him.  Though she felt boneless and limp, she smiled sleepily and accepted his kiss.  Encouraged, he murmured into her hair, “I promise, I’ll be gentle and quick.  I won’t leave our wedding bed without taking every opportunity to give you my son.”

When Sandor finally permitted Arya to rise and dress, she was unsteady and sore.  None of the Dreadfort men would meet her gaze.  Any doubts that had remained about the nature of the relationship between their lady and their commander had been completely erased.  When he emerged from the tent, Sandor lifted her into his arms and kissed her thoroughly in full sight of their men.

Pleased, he growled, “Are you sore, my lady?”

She smirked and quietly offered a defiant, “Aye.”

Her husband kissed her again.  “Good.”  He set her back on her feet and slapped her soundly on the rump.  “Get your sweet ass on your horse.”

Irrun was waiting nearby with her horse already saddled.  He handed her a large wedge of hard cheese and some stale bread with her horse’s reins.  Skeptically, he asked, “Are you well, my lady?”  He coughed slightly and looked askance.  “You seem tired this morning.”

“I am.”  She glanced at Sandor, making quick work of folding their tent.  “My new husband was reluctant to wait any longer to enjoy his wedding night.  He seemed to think the wights might deprive him of it if he waited.” 

Irrun glanced up, smirking broadly.  “So we heard.”

Arya returned his smile, abashed.  “I trust you men won’t let me fall from my horse today.”

“Lady Clegane, you alone insisted on riding out to save our families from the dead.”  He nodded grimly.  “We’ll follow you over the edge and then some.  You won’t fall from your horse, I swear it.”  He glanced at Sandor and gave her another slow grin.  “Besides, Lord Clegane wouldn’t like it!”

Irrun turned away and mounted his own horse, quietly urging his archers to find their mounts.

“Lady Clegane,” Arya murmured.  She liked the taste of it on her tongue.


	25. The Long March

Flanking the dead proved to be viciously tricky.  Though the Night King’s army plodded along at a glacial pace, there was no telling where they were going or how far away they were until the freezing mist and sudden cold foretold their imminent arrival.  Arya had to trust what Bran had told them, that the Night King would follow him wherever he went.  Since Jon and Daenerys’s armies had taken ship at White Harbor, their small party alone stood between the army of the dead and what remained of the living.  Any aid Jon or Bran could have lent them was long gone. 

For his part, Sandor continued to drive them long past the point of breaking.  Arya suspected he was keen to keep her far ahead of the vanguard of the Night King’s army, though he needn’t have bothered.  Having seen firsthand what the walkers could do, she was firmly convinced that not even the entire guild of Faceless Men could have picked off the commanders of the Night King’s army.  Though she bitterly regretted having to admit it, Sandor had been right.  Her water dancing and assassin’s skills were of little value against an enemy so vast.

Arya was grateful to find that Moat Cailin had been prepared against their coming, and the granaries had already been emptied, the carts sent trundling towards Barrowton.  Jon had sent them a raven, and thankfully, their maester had survived the Boltons and Greyjoys to issue his instructions. 

When Arya woke after a few hours dreamless sleep inside the fortress, she was surprised to find Sandor leaning against the mantle of a raging fire, muttering to himself.  She pulled her sark up on her shoulders and crossed the sweltering room to his side.  She glanced between her husband and the blaze, shocked that he would permit himself to be in such proximity to its flames.

Cautiously, Arya wrapped her arms around Sandor’s chest, and when he laid one of his heavy hands atop hers, she murmured, “What are you doing?”

Vaguely, he answered, “I thought you might be cold.  I built up the fire.”

Arya creased her brows and tightened her grip around him.  “You’re a bad liar.  If you wanted me to be warm, you’d have stayed in bed where you belong.  What’s got you out of bed in the middle of the night?”

Sandor let out a deep breath she didn’t realize he’d been holding and tore his eyes away from the flames.  Immediately, they died down nearly to smoldering coals.  Arya backed away from the fireplace, dragging Sandor with her.

“Seven hells!  What was that?”  Sandor refused to meet her eye, and she grabbed his chin to force him to look at her.  “What were you doing?”

“Nothing.”

Sandor took Arya’s hand and tried to lead her back to bed, but she refused to take another step. 

“Not once have you ever lied to me.  You’re going to start now?”

Sandor glanced at the fire weakly licking around the glowing coals with deepest revulsion and shivered.  With a gentle tug, he towed Arya towards the bed and she followed him reluctantly.  He sat down on the edge of the bed, braced his elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor at her toes.

“Do you remember I told you that Beric and Thoros made me look into the fire, and I saw a vision there that led us to the wights?”

“Yes . . .”

“I saw more than the wights.  I saw lots of other things besides, things that didn’t make sense to me then, but mean more as time goes by.”

“What kind of things?”

He shook his head slowly.  “I can’t tell you.”

Arya knelt before him and took his hands.  “Why not?”

“Because sometimes, when I tell someone what I see, the visions change.”  He glanced up at her from beneath his heavy brow.  “There are things in the fire that I want . . .”  He grimaced.  “I won’t risk telling even you lest they be lost.”

“What do you see?  Do you see me?  Do you see us?”

Softly, reluctantly, he answered, “Aye.”

“What did you see that changed?”

Sandor turned Arya’s hand in his so that her ring was burnished in a ruddy glow.  “I saw the wights below the Eyrie.  We were raining the fury of the hells down on the dead, and though they kept coming, they were never able to overcome the narrow pass that leads up to its gate.  Daenerys took her two beasts and mowed them down.  After resting a short while in the Vale, we were able to march into the Crownlands and defeat Cersei with our forces almost entirely intact.  King’s Landing was still standing.  After that last war council, I looked into the flames again at the Dreadfort, and I saw the dead somewhere else entirely, and this time, it was completely different.  Our victory in the Vale of Arryn was gone.”

“You mean trapping them in the Vale would have worked?”

“I think . . . aye.”  He studied Arya intently.  “Almost certainly, but the moment when that could have happened is gone, and different choices are in front of us now.”

“What kind of choices?”

Again, Sandor shook his head stubbornly, and Arya realized her question brushed against the flesh of his fears.  “Hard choices.  I see several paths that cross, but I can’t see how they can all be true.”  Sandor lifted his head and his eyes were haunted.  “I didn’t want to look in the fire the first time.  I didn’t want to believe the visions, but when they led us true to the mountain where we found the wights, I couldn’t deny what I had seen.”

“Maybe the Lord of Light is just fucking with you.”

Sandor’s teeth flashed in his beard for a moment, and he drew Arya into his arms.  Laying back into their bed, he answered, “It could be, but I hope not.  There are things in the flames . . . things that I’ve barely dared consider my entire life, and they are right there, taunting me.  I keep watching, trying to figure out which path to take to lead us there, but the details keep changing.”

“What did Thoros used to say?  The night is dark and full of terrors?”

He said the words with her.  “ . . . dark and full of terrors, aye.”  Sandor stroked one of his hands over her hair and down Arya’s back.  He was gratified when she practically arched against his touch.  Smiling sadly at her, he continued, “And every fucking one of them is bearing down on us.”

* * *

“I don’t like it.”  Korseph, the man Sandor had appointed as their master of sword, frowned at the narrow causeway.  “If we’re ambushed here—“

“Aye.  The swamplands of the Neck never really freeze over completely, least not in any winter I remember.  At least most of the bugs have settled in or died.”

“When we travelled with father, it took almost two weeks to reach the Riverlands.  We were all mounted, but our entire household was loaded into wagons.  How long will it take a small party?”

Sandor narrowed his eyes and considered.  “On the Queensroad?  Eight days, maybe ten.”

Arya frowned.  “How will the Night King do it?  If the wights can’t manage the water, he’d have to march every one of them over the causeway.  I suppose he could march them through the forests west of here . . .”

Flatly, Sandor answered, “This is the way we need to go,” and nudged his horse out onto the causeway.

Arya narrowed her eyes and watched her husband’s back.

“Milady?  Do you think we ought to go around?”

She glanced up at Irrun, and smoothed her features into a firm smile.  “Lord Clegane has been soldiering in Westeros longer than the two of us combined.  If he says this is the path, then we will have to trust him.”

Dusk came early in the swamplands, the canopy and dense vegetation blotting out the weak winter light sooner than usual.  Clegane showed no sign of stopping for rest.  When the one of the horses stepped too close to the edge of the causeway and nearly slid into the murky black water, Arya made her way through the column to Sandor’s side.

“Sandor, we must stop.  We can’t risk any of the horses straying into the water.”

“No.  Not yet.  We must make every effort to shave time off our journey through the Neck.”

“Don’t you think the Night King will have to go around?  He won’t be able to march the wights through the water.  That should buy us several days.  Surely we can afford—“

“No.”  He said it quietly, but his tone left no room for discussion.

Arya pulled on the reins of Sandor’s horse to bring them to a stop.  “Tell me.”

Sandor glanced over his shoulder.  The Dreadfort men had started hanging back slightly when Arya and Sandor rode together, as though to afford them a modicum of privacy.    In the dense darkness of the swamp, Arya could only barely make out Irrun’s bay some twenty yards behind them.  Under the pretense of kissing her, Sandor guided Arya’s ear to his lips with a gentle hand behind her neck.

“You have to trust me.  We haven’t the time to spare.  They are moving faster than you think.”  With a firm kiss, he released her.

“How do you know?”

Sandor glanced at her and back at the causeway.  “You know how I know.”

* * *

By the time Sandor had pushed the Dreadfort men through a grueling nine-day march through the neck, morale in their party was becoming grave.  Five more of their men had been dispatched to clear the people of Greywater Watch, and their relief to be released from Sandor’s command for the moment couldn’t have been more evident.  It was only promise of a rest at the Twins that kept the rest of them going.

Sandor caught Arya and pulled her aside after hearing her promise them a respite.  Angrily, he murmured into her ear, “No!  There’s no time.  If we linger too long at the Twins—“

“What?  What will happen?”  Arya narrowed her eyes at him.  “I can’t see how the Night King’s army can be anyplace close.  You have to tell me what’s got you so frightened!”

He shook his head resolutely.  “I won’t.  You know I won’t.”

Arya narrowed her eyes.  “If you won’t tell me, then I have no reason to give the men as to why we’re riding them into the ground.  They need rest.  By the Seven, if we push them any harder, they’ll murder us in our sleep!  We’re resting for a day at the Twins.”  Arya released him and began to walk away.  Over her shoulder she tossed, “Consider it an order from your liege.”

Sandor caught her hand and pulled her back.  “Do you remember the fear you felt the last time we stood looking at the Twins?  When your family was so close that you could taste it, and you were afraid still they’d be snatched away?”

Arya’s eyes widened.  “Yes.”

He closed his hands around her face.  His eyes were ringed with dark bruises of exhaustion, and beneath his beard, his cheeks were hollowing.  He implored her, “Sweetling, don’t go to the Twins.  No good will come of it.”

Arya turned her face into his palm and kissed it.  “We need rest.  We need supplies and horses.  There’s no place else for us to go.”

Sandor released his wife bitterly.  As she walked away to speak with Irrun, he muttered beneath his breath, “No, there’s no place for us to go at all.”

* * *

When they neared the Twins in the morning, Arya was shocked they weren’t met by sentries several miles out.  She knew the lookouts on the towers had to see them, even though a bitterly cold drizzle had started to pepper them and muddy the road.  Sandor refused to meet her eye 

When the road wound round to the main gate of the west tower, Arya was horrified to find the proud portal to the gate nearly ripped from its moorings.  For the first time in six hundred years, the path across the Green Fork was wide open, and not a single human soul barred their path.

She rounded on her husband.  “You knew!  How did the wights get around us?”

Sandor buried his head in his chest.  “I didn’t know for certain until we were at Moat Cailin, but I got a better look at the part of the wall I’ve been seeing in the flames.  I thought I’ve been seeing the fall of Eastwatch . . . though I’ve never seen it, I now believe I saw the fall of the Shadow Tower.  I think a second wave of the dead skirted Winterfell and came through the Barrowlands while we were at Moat Cailin.  When our men and the people of Moat Cailin reach Barrowton, it will be a wasteland.”

Arya dismounted and grasped the reins of Sandor’s horse.  “How did they cross the Neck before we did?”

Sandor lifted his eyes slowly to look at his wife.  “In the flames, I saw the walkers put their hands to the ground.  There was no mist, no cold, but the waters of the swamp froze, and they marched right through.  I was hoping to reach the Twins ahead of the Shadowtower wights, but now we’re caught between the two.  If we had led them east towards the Eyrie, the two armies would have converged before they entered the pass to the Bloody gate.  When Jon and Daenerys decided to make their stand at King’s Landing instead, everything changed.”

Barely able to find her voice, Arya asked, “How close are they?”

Sandor clenched his jaw.  “I don’t know.  We could be a day behind the Shadowtower wights, it could be as little as a few hours.  We could be as many as two or three days ahead of the Eastwatch wights.”  He shrugged and grunted in consideration.  “Maybe more.”

Arya’s eyes went wide.  “What about Seagard?  Oldstones?  Fairmarket?”

“They’ve likely already been taken, or will be within the next day.  If we ride hard for Riverrun and have luck on our side, we might be able to save the people there, but within a week or so, Bran will have made it to King’s Landing, if Jon hasn’t already taken him there.  If the dead follow Bran, they are likely to march in force through the Trident and into the Crownlands.”

“We’re fucked.”

Sandor pursed his lips.  “Aye, we’re fucked.”


	26. Mutiny

The Dreadfort men met Sandor’s news with stunned silence.  Arya wasn’t sure if their exhausted minds were unable to grasp the full implications of their situation or if this was the quiet that gathered before their rage was unleased.  She glanced at Sandor and noticed his hand clenched around the hilt of his long sword.  His feet were braced against the mutiny that he was sure was about to unfold.

“Lord Clegane?”  Uncertainly, Irrun stepped forward.

Reluctantly, Sandor’s deep rumble scraped out, “Aye?”

“Our families . . . our women and children . . . did they make it to Winterfell?”

He glanced uncomfortably at Arya.  “I only know what the Lord of Light shows me, and I only saw a glimpse of Winterfell.  In the flames, Winterfell still stands, and we made sure the Dreadfort was cleared before the Eastwatch wights fell upon us.”

A collective sigh rippled amongst the men. 

Reyland, a heavy, bearded man with only one eye and a pair of scarred battle axes, spoke up.  “We didn’t promise to save all of Westeros.  We only swore to try to save the North.”  His lips twisted with regret.  “You put my daughters on a wagon and sent them to Winterfell.  That’s more than anyone else was willing to do.”

Arya grimaced sadly.  “How many daughters do you have, Reyland?”

Reyland opened his mouth, but Sandor answered for him.  “Eight, but praise the Seven, none of them are as ugly as he is.”  The man grinned at his fellows as they laughed appreciatively.  “I’ve no idea how you convinced your wife to spread her legs for you after the first set of twins, but aye, every curly head was accounted for.”

Korseph sagged onto the side of an overturned hand cart and mopped at his face.  “Well, we sure as the hells can’t go back, and I’m in no hurry to go forward too fast, neither, but there’s thousands of people scattered across the Riverlands.  If we sit here and do nothing, they’ll all become part of the army of the dead.”  He ran a finger between his filthy stock and his throat.  “What’s your command, milord, milady?”

Arya glanced at Sandor and lifted her brow.  After a few seconds of biting his lip in indecision, Sandor knelt and drew a rough sketch of the Trident in the mud.

“I don’t know where the wights will go, exactly.  If the dead choose to follow the Green Fork for the most direct route to King’s Landing, they could bypass Seagard, Oldstones, and Fairmarket.”  He jabbed into the mud to indicate the locations of the settlements along the Blue Fork.  “If they bear west to ravage those towns, it will slow their progress towards Harrenhal and the settlements there.”

He sighed heavily.  “No matter which direction we go, we run the risk of being overrun by the wights, but we are fewer, easier to hide, and much faster so long as they don’t find us.  If we’re to try to save the people of the Riverlands, we’ll have to split up.  A third of us can ride towards Seagard tonight.  If the wights have already hit Seagard, you can ride for the Blue Fork and find boats to take you south.  On the water, you might be able to overtake the wights to warn Oldstones and Fairmarket. 

“A third of us should set out for Riverrun.  We’ll never be able to convince them to retreat to the Westerlands or Casterly Rock, but we might be able to convince them to retreat to the Crag.  The Young Wolf made it as far with the Lannister forces on his heels, so they should be able to make it even with the snows upon us.  From there, half of that party can oversee the Riverrun evacuation, while the other half continues south to High Heart, Acorn Hall, Pinkmaiden, and Stoney Sept.  It’s a long ride, but every mile should take you closer to safety.  I doubt the dead will push farther south than that if they are bent on King’s Landing. 

“The rest of us should take the Green Fork south to Harroway’s, Darry, Harrenhal, and Sow’s Horn.  Harrenhal is the largest castle between here and King’s Landing.  If this group can get ahead of the dead, they’ll be running right into Cersei’s arms.”  He stood slowly and softly said, “I’ll lead this group personally, as I’m the only man here that knows those lands.  Once we cross into the Crownlands, there will be no place to find shelter or hide. 

“Lady Clegane will lead the party riding for Riverrun—“

“Like hell I will.”

Sandor glanced up angrily.  “You’re my wife and you’ll go—“

“Wherever I damn well please.”  Sandor narrowed his eyes dangerously at Arya, but she continued, “There’s no guarantee of safety anywhere.  If anything, the last place you want me to be is at the Crag, so close to Casterly Rock.”

“Aye,” he agreed darkly, “I’d have you sipping wine in the Arbor and fucking a Dornishman if it meant it would keep you away from the Night King and the Lannisters, but since that’s not an option, I’ll have to settle for having you alive with your kinsmen.”

Korseph cleared his throat pointedly.  Arya glanced around, and the Dreadfort men’s faces bore a variety of expressions from amusement to embarrassment to chagrin at finding themselves embroiled in a dispute between the Hound and his wife.  Diplomatically, Korseph suggested, “Me mum’s a Mallister, and me da’s people come from near Raventree Hall.  I can go to Riverrun and convince them to flee west.”

Sandor glared at him, but Rikard spoke up next.  “Putting the horses on a pole boat at Oldstones will be a fiddly business.  Beggin’ your pardon, milord, but I think I’d best take the party to Seagard.  We’ll need the fastest riders to leave now if we’re going to try to slip past the dead.”

 “It’s not right milady should be sent somewhere where your lordship can’t see to her safety personally.”  Irrun stepped closer to Sandor.  “Even with a Dornishman on offer,” quiet sniggers were stifled immediately beneath Sandor’s glare, “she doesn’t want to leave you,” he glanced up at his commander nervously, “and I know you don’t want to leave her.  If you’ll suffer my company, I’ll lend my bow to helping ensure milady is safe at your side.”

Sandor glared furiously around at their men.  This hadn’t been the type of mutiny he’d expected.  The masters of sword, horse, and bow negotiated to rebalance their parties, and within minutes, ranks had been reformed.  Seeing their resolve, Sandor finally granted his approval with a curt nod.

Glancing at Irrun, he commented darkly, “Aye, Lady Clegane may as well come with us.  That Valyerian blade’s the best one we’ve got against the wights, and if you have to haul her bitching and whinging all the way to the Crag, the wights will know precisely where you are and follow you the whole way.” 

The tension broke, and the Dreadfort men laughed warmly.  Sobering, Sandor looked around at them.  “We might all die tomorrow, no matter which way you go.  Take comfort that your women and children are at Winterfell.  Lady Sansa will look after them and see to it that they are fed.  If the Stranger calls for you, tell him to piss off.  You’ve got better things to do.”

Sandor dismissed them with another stiff jerk of his head.  The Dreadfort men dispersed, some seeing to the horses, others venturing into the castle to find what they could to supplement their foodstuffs and other supplies. 

When Arya found herself alone with Sandor, they stood awkwardly separate, busying their hands with tack or weapons to avoid looking at one another.  The entire North had heard her bitching and bickering with her husband, albeit he hadn’t been her husband at the time.  This felt different.  Their disagreements had always been personal before, whereas tonight, she’d very openly questioned his judgment and refused to follow his command.  She’d seen women beaten to death by their husbands for significantly less.

“Sandor . . .”

He glanced over at her from where he filled a water skin at the well.  “Aye?”

She sighed and twisted her horse’s bridle between her fingers.  She didn’t want to apologize, precisely, but there were words that needed saying.  When she didn’t answer, he barked, “Have you something to say or not?”

She huffed defensively.  “I wouldn’t fuck a Dornishman, even if you had one.”

Sandor snorted.  “Aye, well, I’ve no intention of sharing my wife.  I’d rather you weren’t slaughtered by the dead or captured by the Lannisters either.”

Arya closed the space between them.  “The Lannisters already have a sizable bounty on your head.  After your trip to King’s Landing, I’m sure Cersei would gladly have your head mounted on a pike.  I don’t want you going back there at all.  At least if we go together—“

“Aye, she’ll be able to mount the head of Ned Stark’s daughter right next to mine.  The same birds can pluck out our eyes.”  He glanced up at her, and Arya was relieved to see that he wasn’t angry.  “Give me your water skin and I’ll fill it.”

Arya fetched it from her saddle and handed it over.  “There’s never been anything we couldn’t fight our way out of together.”  Sandor cocked his brow at his wife and grimaced in distaste.  “Well,” she amended, “that didn’t really count.  There wasn’t much I could do at the time to help you with Brienne.”

Sandor sighed and capped the water skin.  “I didn’t really think you’d let me send you to the Crag, but I had to try.  One of these days, we’re going to find ourselves in a scrape we can’t get out of.  Being pressed between the dead on one side and Cersei Lannister on the other is likely to be more than we can manage.”

Arya accepted her water skin back from Sandor and stowed it in a saddle bag.  “Do we have another choice?”

Sandor took a handful of Arya’s wolf skin coat sleeve and pulled her into his arms.  “Aye, there’s always other choices, but I doubt either of us could live with ourselves if we didn’t try to save everyone we could.”  He rested his cheek against her hair.  “It’s warm in Essos, even during the worst winters in Westeros.  It could have been easy money selling our swords there.”

Arya closed her eyes and sighed in relief.  Even when he’d had real reason to be angry with her, Sandor had never vented his temper against her.  The closest he had ever come was backhanding her when she’d had the nerve to try to run him through with Needle.  In retrospect, it had been stupid, arrogant, and ungrateful on her part.  Joffrey had done worse to Sansa without her ever deserving it.  She shivered in revulsion when she considered what would have happened had Sansa been married to her golden prince.

Arya tightened her grip around her husband.  “I love you.”

Sandor glanced down at her in surprise.  “Aye, well, I hope you feel the same when the wights are bearing down on us or when Cersei gets her claws on us.”

“Better the wights than Cersei.  If she finds out that we’ve married, she’ll find all manner of unpleasant ways to dispose of us.”

“Aye, I’m sure she will.”

* * *

“In the name of the Seven, woman, lay still!”

Arya and Sandor had fallen into the first bed they found that would accommodate both of them.  The entire castle stank of Walder Frey: sour wine, unwashed men, and mildew.  Beneath it all, she imagined she could smell Stark blood.  The rank odor permeated their room, their bed, their pillows, but that wasn’t what was keeping her awake.

Arya turned her head into her shoulder.  “Did we just send those men out to die?”

Sandor grunted dismissively and pulled his wife against him.  “Aye.  All men die.  One way or another, every step you take your entire life will lead you to the Stranger in the end.  There’s no escaping it.  At least they know their women and children are safe.  If they die, they’ll have a good death, a quick death.”

“I’m afraid I led you all out of the Dreadfort just to be slaughtered in the Riverlands.”

Sandor scrubbed at his eyes.  “You can’t be blamed for the wights any more than you can be blamed for the snows.  They’re soldiers; they’re men.  They’ve made their peace with it.”  He kissed her roughly against her hair.  “You should too.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there were no blades drawn when they received their orders.”  Sandor spread his hand across her belly.  His thumb stroked the linen across her skin.  “Go to sleep, sweetling.  There’s time enough to think about the Stranger’s embrace when you’re dead.  Tonight, you’re still mine, and you’re keeping me awake.”

* * *

The chamber was lit with so many torches it was as bright as broad daylight.  Warily, he got his feet beneath him and rose, refusing to take his eyes off the beautiful and deadly woman before him.  With every movement, heavy chains scraped and rattled against the cold stone.

It had been a long ride, a hard ride, but never once had they seen the wights.  Sandor had almost dared to believe that they’d make it all the way to the Crownlands to reconnoiter with Jon’s army when they had the misfortune to ride in front of a Lannister ranging party just outside Harrenhal.  He was recognized at once, and finally had to throw down his sword when one of the Lannister cunts was able to get his hands on Arya.  Sandor tried telling the Lannisters that she was a captive, some doxy they’d picked up on the road, but something in his face must have given him away.  Now they were at the mercy of Cersei Lannister.

She’d changed since he’d last seen her.  All her long, golden curls had been sheared away, and now she wore heavy black gowns glittering with jet and silver.  She looked something like a cross between a knight in black armor and a woman in mourning.  Her eyes had always been cold, but now they burned with malice.

“I’m not easily fooled, not easily surprised.  Who’d have thought my loyal Hound was capable of such intrigues?  I was shocked when I was told you had abandoned your post during the Battle of Blackwater.  It was the fire, I suppose, that drove you away, but still . . . after more than a decade in Lannister service, I found it hard to believe that you had turned tail and run.”  Cold fear squirmed in his belly as Cersei Lannister raked her eyes over him.  “If you had been at Joffrey’s side where you belonged, maybe he’d be here now.  I guess we’ll never know.”

Cersei narrowed her eyes and paced closer when he kept his silence.  “I didn’t quite believe my eyes when you showed up with the dragon queen and the Starks.  A coward, apparently, a traitor, obviously, but nothing could have prepared me for this.”  Cersei opened her clenched fist, and there, lying in the center of her palm was a gold band.  Across its surface, three hounds chased one another, separated by a twinkling chip of topaz and a chip of jet.

Sandor grit his teeth together.  “Where did you find that?”

Cersei smiled sweetly, condescendingly, venomously.  “On your wife’s finger.”

He snorted in derision, though he felt his gorge rise in fear.  “No one would be stupid enough to marry an ugly fucker like me.  That whore we picked up in the Riverlands must have lifted it while I was asleep.”

“Did Jon Snow give you his sister in return for your services?”

“I parted ways with Jon Snow weeks ago, and I haven’t seen Sansa since I left King’s Landing.”

Cersei’s smile broadened.  “I didn’t mean that sister.  It’s fitting really, that a disgusting little animal like Arya Stark would find herself married to you.  Catelyn Stark would have torn you apart herself before she let you lay your filthy hands on her daughter.”

Cersei cut her eyes to Qybern and lifted her chin slightly.  When he opened the cell door, a massive golden helm ducked beneath the door frame, and his brother drug his gagged wife, kicking and fighting, into the room.  Sandor couldn’t help himself, and before he knew what he was doing, his feet had carried him to the end of his chains.

Arya had been so focused on resisting the Mountain that she’d not seen him when she’d been drug into the cell.  The rattle of his chains and his grunt when he came to the end of them caught her attention, and she redoubled her efforts, frantic to get to Sandor.

“How touching.”  Cersei swung back to regard Sandor.  “You know, it has been centuries since the right of First Night was abolished in the Seven Kingdoms, but I’ve been considering bringing it back.”

“What?”  Sandor was brought up short, and all color drained from his face.

“I understand some of the northern houses still practice it, at the Dreadfort, for example.  No doubt your wife will be well acquainted with the custom.”  Cersei folded her hands primly before her and smiled sweetly.  “As a lesser son of House Clegane, it would be your brother, wouldn’t it, who would have the right to claim First Night with your wife?”

Sandor’s eyes darted between Arya and Gregor.  To his horror, Gregor had chained Arya to the opposite side of the cell and started removing his armor, though he left his helm in place.

“No!” 

Sandor threw his body against the end of his restraints, but they only cut into his flesh.  He roared incoherently at Cersei, at Gregor, at the gods themselves as he pulled frantically at his chains.

“It’s obviously not the first night of your wedded bliss,” Cersei paused and smiled when the sound of linen ripping cut through Arya’s screams against her gag, “but a lord must be allowed his due.  I’m sure Lord Clegane will be particularly solicitous to your wife.  She is family, after all.”

Cersei turned to go, and Arya was screaming in earnest now, her voice shredding and echoing against the cold stones a thousand times over.

“Arya!” 

Sandor couldn’t bear to look at her and couldn’t bear to not see.  He’d heard the story of his brother raping Elia Martel a thousand times and refused to imagine the gory details.  As the horror played out again, this time against his own wife, Sandor shattered into jagged splinters, knowing the only thing he’d ever loved in his life was being obliterated beneath his monstrous brother, and he was powerless to help her.

Sandor hauled at the chains, praying a single link would break.  As the sickening, wet sounds of Gregor driving mercilessly into his tiny, precious beloved were punctuated by Arya’s screams of pain and terror, he clawed frantically at his manacles and the ring where his chains were secured until his fingers bled.

Eventually, Arya’s gag slipped, and she screamed his name over and over again as he did everything he could to try to reach her.

“Sandor!”

He sobbed in rage as he tried yet again, futilely, to wrench the chains loose.

“Sandor!”

Sandor’s eyes sprung open, and she was there, her arms wrapped around him in the dark.  Sandor was wringing wet, and he crushed Arya to him.

“Sandor, you were dreaming!  You’re fine!”

He kissed her forcefully.  “They can’t ever know.”  Sandor crushed her shoulders between his hands.  “Cersei.  Gregor.  They can’t ever know we were married.  They can’t ever find you, because if they do . . .”  Sandor pressed his eyes shut and clasped Arya to his chest.  “They can’t know.”

Arya stroked her husband’s back and shushed him.  “We’ll probably never see them, either one, ever again.  Jon’s army will tear through the Lannister forces, and they’ll both die, either at the hands of the dead or beneath dragon fire.”  Arya extricated one of her arms from Sandor’s crushing embrace and clasped her fingers behind his neck.  She pulled his face close, laying her forehead against his after kissing him.  “I’d have liked to kill the Mountain and Cersei myself, but they’ll be just as dead at the hands of an Unsullied, Dothraki, or turned to ash by Daenerys.”

“Promise me you won’t go back there, not ever.  Not while they still live.  Forget your fucking list, and just stay with me.”

Arya searched his eyes.  “I can’t promise that, but so long as I can, I’ll try.”  Sandor sighed in relief, and she stroked a thumb over his cheek.  “I’ll stay right here by your side until my last breath.”

It took a long time for Sandor’s heart to stop racing, and he laid awake long after Arya’s breaths had lengthened back into sleep.  He knew in his heart that Arya would never lay down her vendetta, would never stop crossing names off her list.  The blood debts owed to her were too many and felt too deeply to be put down.  He just hoped that if it came down to it, it was the wights and not Cersei Lannister who would have the killing of them.


	27. The Riverlands

Sandor set his ale cup down on the table with a deep sigh.  “They sure cleared out fast this morning.”

Arya glanced up from spreading a soft cheese across some stale bread she’d found in the kitchens.  “I think they wanted to be gone before you’d had a chance to change your mind.”

“Hmph.”

By the time Arya and Sandor had finished breaking their fast in the great hall of the eastern Twin, only their own party remained.  Several hours remained before the dawn, but it was their hopes that they would be able to slip undetected past the wights in the dark. 

Just as Rikard had predicted, the horses weren’t having it when they tried to load their mounts onto the flat pole boats that were necessary to ferry their party up the Green Fork.  In the end, Sandor had wrapped a sark over the eyes of each horse to lead it onto a boat.  It had taken far longer than any of them anticipated, but once the job was done, the grueling task of poling up the river would have to begin.

It was tight, but they were able to split their party between two pole barges.  To ensure all would have the chance to rest, they worked in four hour shifts of four polers that alternated every two hours.  Even though they’d elected to take a six-hour shift to start the rotation, when it came time for them to rest, Arya had to practically pry the pole from Sandor’s hands.

“We’ve two weeks worth of poling ahead of us.  It will do none of us any good if our strongest blade and commander is too tired to stand if the wights attack.”

Reluctantly, Sandor handed his pole to one of the archers with a nod of thanks.

“That’s assuming we make it so far.  We’re damn exposed out on the river.  If one of the walkers sees us, we’re easy pickings with a spear.  If they have their dragon . . .”  He shivered in revulsion.  “. . . Let’s just say I’d rather be off the river as soon as we can manage it.”

“We could have taken the Queensroad.”

“We’ll have to eventually, but I thought the river would be our best bet to keep us away from Lannister troops and wights alike.”

Arya offered Sandor some salt pork which he grudgingly took.  He chewed in silence, watching the soft morning shadows amongst the trees hawkishly. 

Softly, she asked, “Does the Crown still hold Harrenhal?”

“Aye.  Most likely.”

Arya settled back into Sandor’s shoulder.  “Do you think they will receive us without turning us over to the Crown?"

“No.”

“Then how will we clear Harrenhal?”

“I’d hoped to buy messengers at the Crossroads Inn.  You’ve a friend there.  If he can get his head out of the damned larder long enough, I’d hoped he would be able to help us find men that would suit.”

Arya smiled.  “The last time I saw Hotpie, he was boring me with his recipe for making pie crust.  That’s how I found out the Starks were back in Winterfell.”  She craned her head to look up at her husband.  “You’d be surprised what he gleans from talking to travelers.  He’d be worth paying regularly for his reports.  It would be good to have someone we trust so close to the Crownlands reporting to us.”

Sandor smiled down at Arya warmly.  “Aye, and where do you expect we will be, that we’ll need someone reporting to us?”

“We’re not going to die.”  She stifled a yawn and snuggled deeper into his shoulder.  “The Many Faced God would be a fool to take a pair of such effective killers from this world.”  Sandor huffed in silent amusement, and Arya wrapped her arms around him.  “Some day, we’ll go back to the Dreadfort or wherever Jon and Sansa see fit to put us, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives being a thorn in their sides.”

“Given up on Essos then?”

Sandor’s warmth had begun to seep into Arya, and the morning sun was pouring golden light over her face.  She yawned and stretched against her husband, and his hand wound around her waist.  Now that she had sat down, the weariness in her body from weeks in the saddle and the hours poling the flatboat had settled deep into her muscles.  She felt leaden and heavy, but deliciously so, pressed against her lover’s solid heat.

“I thought you wanted sons?  I can’t very well fulfill kill contracts if I’m heavy with child, and I’ll be damned in the lowest of the seven hells before I let you run off to enjoy being a sell sword in Essos without me.  You’re just going to have to learn to endure peace the same as me.”

Sandor’s thick thumb caressed Arya’s throat, and warmth stirred sluggishly, sweetly, low in her belly.  His voice rumbled thick and soft when he answered, “Aye, I think I’d like that.  I’d like to try sitting before my own hearth without having to make my bread from another man’s blood.  I’d like to see if home can mean a stack of stones, and not just the comfort of you at my back.”

In the last few moments before her exhausted mind dissolved into the ruddy peace beneath her eyelids, Arya lingered in a memory of her parents sitting at the head of the hall in Winterfell.  Eddard and Catelyn were smiling at one another, her father’s hand resting on her mother’s, and all the hall was ablaze with laughter and light.  She could smell the hall, the aroma of the fire and the beeswax candles, mead and wine, roast goose and lamb stew and rabbit, the yeastiness of fresh baked bread and ale.  She’d wanted to go back to that moment since the day she’d left Winterfell as a child.  She sighed in contentment.  It was all too easy to imagine herself in her mother’s seat, and Sandor in her father’s.

* * *

Just south of the Mountains of the Moon, Arya was surprised to find Jon and a small party of Dothraki waiting for them where the mountains’ tributary fed into the Green Fork.  After a week and a half of non-stop poling down the Green Fork, the Dreadfort men were anxious to put their feet back on the snow for longer than it took to clear a settlement or farm.

Arya and Sandor disembarked and left the Dreadfort men to secure the pole boats.  As they approached, Jon’s eyes flicked between the two of them, and his mouth hardened.  Sandor sighed deeply.

“I understand, Lord Clegane, that congratulations are in order.”  Jon’s tone was hard, cold.

Arya stepped closer to Sandor and loosed her blade in the scabbard.  Sandor turned his head slightly towards her at the sound, and he threw her a warning glance.  He subtly shifted his stance and stretched out his fingers, gesturing for her to stay behind him.

“Aye . . .”  Sandor flicked his eyes between the Dothraki screamers flanking Jon.  “I assume Sam Tarly told you he married us in the godswood near the Dreadfort.”

“Aye!”  Jon spat hotly.  “I’d not have believed it had not come from my own brother’s lips.”

When the king raised his voice, the Dreadfort men dropped what they were doing.  Arya could hear their feet crunching in the snow as they formed ranks behind her.  Swords slithered from their scabbards and bowstrings creaked as arrows were nocked.  Behind Jon, the Dothraki leaned forward in their saddles, their own curved blades clenched.

Arya narrowed her eyes at Jon.  “What about Bran?  Surely he told you what he saw.”

Jon turned his gaze on his sister.  “He did.  He told me he saw you kill a White Walker,” he glanced down at his hands, gripping his reins, “and that the Hound cut through scores of wights trying to get to you.  He told me the Hound came to Winterfell for you.”

“Aye.  I went to the lands beyond the Wall because the Lord of Light showed me where the wights were.  I went with you to King’s Landing because I’d see the living prevail over the dead.  But I went to Winterfell because I’d heard Arya Stark was still alive, and I needed to see it for myself.”

“I think you came to Winterfell to steal a young and propertied bride while I was busy trying to save Westeros from the dead.”

“You stupid fucking cunt—“ Arya started to stride around Sandor, but he caught her with one steely hand and pressed her back.

“Had I wanted to seize a bride and a castle, I’d have ridden into Winterfell and raped Lady Sansa.  I’d not have marched with you into the North and risked my neck against the wights.  Arya has no properties, no income,” he snorted in disgust, “and do you think if she didn’t want me, I’d be still alive to stand here and debate it with you in the snow?  When I came back from Eastwatch, she’s the one that kissed me, and damn near took my lip off with it!”

Jon glanced at Arya, and her eyes glittered dangerously at him.  His eyes travelled over his sister, resting where Sandor Clegane had wrapped his hand around her hip to keep her pressed behind him.  Arya’s Valyrian dagger was in her hand, curled around Sandor’s restraining arm.  Jon’s lips twitched.  He’d seen Arya sparring with Clegane often enough to know that if she didn’t want to be held by the man, she’d have buried that dagger into his ribs or slit his throat by now.

He smiled slowly, but the smile extended to his eyes.  “Aye, it would take a braver man than me to get in the way of Arya Stark’s temper.  I imagine if you do, it will be you needing my protection, not her.”  He pursed his lips and looked again at Arya, his eyes and tone softening.  “Well met, Lady Clegane.”

Sandor released Arya, and she strode across the snow to Jon.  “Lady fucking Clegane, is it?”

Jon smiled broadly and slid out of his saddle.  “Aye.  I’d have given my blessing had you asked for it.”  He glanced reproachfully at Sandor.  “I expected you to ask a dozen times while we were on the march.”  Jon scooped Arya up in a bear hug, ignoring the live blade in her hand entirely.  Into her ear, he murmured, “Do you love him?  Does he make you happy?”

Relieved, Arya clasped Jon’s shoulders.  “Aye.  He’s home.”

Jon kissed her on the cheek.  “Good.”  He glanced back at his brother by marriage as he set Arya back into the snow.  “Come, we’ve much to discuss.”

* * *

Tents had already been set up in the snow, and Arya and Sandor followed Jon into one of the largest.  When he turned to face them, Arya asked abruptly, “Why are you here?  Aren’t you supposed to be in King’s Landing?” 

Jon poured out goblets of wine and offered them to Arya and Sandor.  “We landed in Dragonstone, and we are making concerted efforts to encourage the citizens of King’s Landing to abandon their homes and flee south.  Bran was right; it doesn’t look like Cersei is going to budge, but we are starting to see an exodus amongst the commoners.  I don’t know how Varys does it.  I don’t care how he does it, to be honest, but the people are going.”

Sandor frowned at the map spread upon the table.  “But how did you get here?  Were you able to crush the Shadow Tower wights?”

Jon’s eyes widened in alarm.  “What do you mean by Shadow Tower wights?”

Sandor and Arya exchanged a look before she explained, “Jon, the Shadow Tower has fallen.  The wights that came through the wall at the Shadow Tower beat us to the Twins, and we’ve been trying to keep pace between the Eastwatch dead at our back and the Shadow Tower dead ahead of us.  We are planning to pick up the Queensroad at the mouth of the Trident and continue riding south.”  She glanced again at Sandor in confusion.  “Surely, you’ve seen the wights?”

“How do you know the Shadow Tower has fallen?”

At the same time, Arya insisted, “He knows,” while Sandor simply said, “I’ve seen it.”

 Jon didn’t question them further.  “We’ve had minor skirmishes with Lannister forces.  Nothing major, but enough to confirm Jaime Lannister’s account of Cersei’s refusal to join in the fight.  That’s all.  Are you sure there’s a second wave of the dead?”

“Even with Walder Frey dead, the houses of the Riverlands would never have left the Twins empty.  It’s too valuable.  When we reached it, there wasn’t a soul within fifty miles of the Twins.”  Arya met Sandor’s eye with dread.  “They must have borne west to try to grow their army from the settlements west of the Trident.”  She tightened her lips.  “Our men are probably already dead.”

Turning back to Jon, she asked, “Can you send ravens to the Crag?  See if any of our men made it there?”

“I’ll have it done at once.  In the meantime, you’ll have to abandon your plan to continue south.  Lannister forces have a strangle hold on the roads and villages south of the Crossroads.  You might be able to slip through, but as soon as word gets out that you are evacuating commoners, the Lannisters will have you in irons and be hauling you back to the Red Keep.  You’ll have to return with us to Dragonstone.  It sounds like we need to sail for King’s Landing immediately if we’re to beat the Night King.”

“What about the rest of the Riverlands?”

Jon looked up regretfully and shook his head.  “It’s too late.  The Crown holds the remainder of the Riverlands.  Their blood is on Cersei’s hands.”  He dropped into a chair and sighed.  “Varys and Tyrion are already in King’s Landing trying to infiltrate the pyromancers.  We’ll have to march from Dragonstone soon if we are to have any chance at all of surviving the dead and destroying the Lannister forces.”

Arya sagged onto a stool beside the table.  “We failed.”

Sandor took her hand and chafed her fingers consolingly.  “The Dreadfort men are hard men, and they rode with the Stranger himself licking at their heels.  Even if only one party survived to push the people of the Riverlands west, we may have saved thousands from joining the ranks of the dead.”

“You did all you could, and it’s far more than Cersei has done.”  Jon took in his sister, dressed in an ill-fitting brigadine and looking as though she barely had the strength to keep from toppling off her stool.  “You must both be tired.  I’ve had my men set up tents for all of you.  We’ll rest here for a few hours before riding for Dragonstone.  Wherever the dead are, we’re safe enough for now.”


	28. The Smith

Before seeking their bed, Arya and Sandor wandered through the small camp, hoping Jon had brought a smith with them.  He wanted to be certain her armor was set aright before they were plunged into battle again.  Arya had been lucky to find a brigadine that fit passing well at the Twins, but in their brief time there, she’d been unable to find a replacement for her mail.  The sleeve still flopped loosely off her sword arm, and in the months since she’d left Winterfell, her mail had grown uncomfortably tight across the bust and hip.  Although he was concerned about protecting her sword arm, Sandor found no end of amusement in teasing her about the fit of her mail.

Once they found Gendry, they had to wait while he finished hammering out the dents from Lord Glover’s plate before he could attend to Arya.  Concealed by the gathering dusk and her heavy furs, he caressed his hand over the softening swell of her hip and squeezed her buttocks appreciatively.

Into her ear, he purred softly, “I’ve no idea why you’re so annoyed.  I like it.”  He nipped gently at her ear.  “Besides, you haven’t been able to pass as a boy for years.  Let the lad alter your mail and be done with it.  Half a smith’s job is altering and refitting armor as knights and squires grow into men.  Why would you be any different?”

Arya grimaced.  “I’m a woman married.  I’d have thought I’d be done growing by now.”

“Being married’s got nothing to do with it.”  He kissed her neck and straightened as Gendry finished up with Glover’s breastplate.  Gendry glanced their way, his eyes flicking between Arya and Sandor, and a pained expression crossed his face.  Distractedly, Sandor commented, “Cersei married King Robert when she was only seventeen, and she grew better than two inches after their wedding.”

“How do you know that?”

Sandor glanced down.  “Hmm?  Oh, aye, I was her shield until Joffrey became king.  I spent nearly every waking hour looking down at the top of her head and listening to the foul schemes it spun out.”

“Did you know about Cersei and Jamie Lannister?”

He snorted in derision.  “Anyone with eyes to see knew about the Queen and the Kingslayer.  Even if I hadn’t had to spend hours outside Jamie’s quarters while Cersei took her private visits with her brother, I was in the Queensguard with the man.  I saw the way Jamie Lannister looked at his sister.”

Arya smirked.  “How did he look at her?”

Sandor caught Gendry’s gaze and nodded in acknowledgement.  Into her ear, he growled, “No doubt the same way I look at you.  He’s ready for you.  Don’t forget about the plate.”

Sandor leaned against one of the posts supporting the smith’s tent, looking on as Gendry spoke with Arya.  He wasn’t overly fond of the whinging little shit, though Arya claimed they’d been friends in the Riverlands.  After assessing the state of the sleeve, Gendry had apparently asked Arya to take off her mail.  Sandor snorted in amusement watching Arya wriggle out of the garment.  When she emerged from beneath its weight, she flashed him a filthy glare, but the sight of her flushed with her hair all mussed rather diminished the effect.  He smiled broadly and lifted his chin in acknowledgement.  With a reluctant smirk, she turned back to answer Gendry’s questions.

“I understand you are to be congratulated, Lord Clegane.”  Lord Glover had lingered after Gendry had buckled his plate back together, and he stood near Sandor adjusting its fit.  “I’d be lying if I said there weren’t more than a few Northern lords who’d considered braving Lady Clegane’s famous temper and blade for a chance at her hand and title.  A number of them are envious it was you who secured the honor.”

Gendry had wrapped a strip of leather around Arya’s chest to take a measurement and had glanced up at Sandor nervously.  He murmured something to Arya, and she tossed a glance over her shoulder at her husband.  Sandor crossed his arms and raised a brow.  Gendry quickly tied a knot in the strip of leather and dropped it from around Arya.  He glanced up again at Sandor, color slowly crawling up from his collar.

Sandor smirked privately and answered Glover, “I couldn’t give the slightest shit about my wife’s name, title, properties, or anything else.  I didn’t come to the North to become a great lord, getting fat and soft in some castle.”  Having measured Arya’s waist, Gendry measured her hips, and Sandor flexed his hands, remembering the feel of them beneath his hands.

“Aye.  We were all surprised to see the Hound riding with Jon Snow.  It’s hard to see how any man worth his mettle could refuse to answer the king’s call to fight the dead.  I hear even Jaime Lannister has broken faith with his sister to come fight with us.”

Softly, Sandor murmured, “I didn’t go back to the North to fight the dead.  I went north to find her.”

Glover looked blankly from Clegane to his wife.  “I wish you luck with her.  If anyone could handle her vicious tongue and violent nature, I’m sure you can.”  He grinned smugly.  “She’ll need a heavy hand, to be sure.  She doesn’t seem like the type to be a dutiful wife, but in the North, there’s no shame in taking certain liberties to take difficult women in hand.  I’m sure you’ll have no trouble bending her to your will.”

The mail laid aside, Gendry was now marking Arya’s new brigadine to be adusted to fit better.  Sandor didn’t particularly appreciate Glover’s insinuations, at once suggesting Arya was only worth having for her title and implying he’d only be able to keep her under control through violence.  He ground his teeth together, considering his response.  Glover’s foul suggestions were likely influenced by his resentment at the Hound rising to a position at the king’s elbow with more influence than his own.  The man plainly felt threatened.

Sandor glanced at Glover.  “Have you hounds at Deepwood Motte?”

Robett glanced up in surprise from his mug of ale.  “Of course!”

Though he knew Arya would be humiliated and furious, he leered openly at his wife.  “A wolf bitch is like any other.  Put something in her mouth and stroke her, and she’ll lay at your feet the rest of her life.”

Glover laughed heartily and clapped Sandor on the shoulder before stalking out of the tent.  Arya turned slowly to face her husband, her eyes narrowed venomously.  Behind her, Gendry bent over his work table, nearly as red as his forge.  Arya slowly closed the few yards between them, her hand wrapped around the hilt of her Valyrian blade.  Sandor smirked, knowing that even if she pulled it, she’d be unlikely to give him more than a flesh wound.

“Did I hear you properly?” Arya hissed, “Lay at your feet?”

“Aye.  My own sweet, loyal wolf bitch.”

Predictably, Arya did draw the blade, but it arced inches from his face.  Sandor knew it was for show as well as she did, and he caught her wrist and passed the hand holding the dagger from one of his massive paws to the other so that her hand was captured securely in his own behind her back.  With his arms around her, Sandor gently plucked the blade from between Arya’s fingers, and she lifted her chin to accept his deep kiss.  Even though she was clearly still angry, Arya allowed herself to melt slightly into his body, and he drew out the kiss as long as he dared.

Quietly, he explained, “I’d not have any lord of the North believing that I ever used force to secure or keep you as my wife.  I’d rather they believed you were as submissive as a lamb in my bed than I was a brute like my brother.”  Sandor released Arya and slid the dagger back into its sheath.  He took her face in his hand.  “I’d not have any man believe there was room between us where he could drive a wedge for his own benefit.”

Tools clattered from the table, and Sandor glanced up at Gendry.  Gendry bore the same pained look on his face as he had before, as though he couldn’t decide if he was revolted, concerned, or furious.

“When will you be finished with my wife’s armor?”

Gendry glanced between them and bobbed his head.  “She’ll have it when she wakes, milord.”

Sandor nodded.  “You have my thanks.  I had to cut her out of her plate, but it held true.  It saved her from the wights.  Even though she was covered in blood, the only thing she could think of was how much trouble it would cause you to repair it.  You can put it right again?”

Gendry’s face softened.  “Aye.  Better than new.”

Sandor turned to go, and Arya allowed him to go without her.  As he stepped out of the tent, he heard her murmur quietly, “And the other, can you have that done by morning too?”

* * *

In the morning, Arya woke earlier than usual, eager to see what Gendry had left for her outside their tent.  She slid from between Sandor’s arms and pulled on the padded jacket she customarily wore beneath her mail.  Outside the tent, she found a bundle wrapped in a pelt.

Arya coaxed the previous night’s coals back into flame to provide light.  He must have worked through the night to enlarge the mail as well as restitching the brigadine.  When she lifted the pauldrons and gorget but found nothing else in the bundle, she thought Gendry might have been unable to finish the other item she’d requested.  He’d promised he’d manage it . . . horrified, Arya looked around in the snow at her feet, realizing she may have dropped it.

“Are you sure you can do it?”

 “Oh, aye.  I’ve never made one before, but it should be simple enough.”  Gendry had lifted his brows in surprise and glanced over her shoulder where Sandor had stood talking to Robett Glover.  “Milady . . . are you sure, though?”

Arya raised her arms so that Gendry could measure her for the alterations to her mail.  “That I want you to make it?  Of course.”

“No, I mean . . . he’s a hard man.  Harder than I think you know.  I saw him do things north of the wall—“

Arya huffed in amusement.  “Not like I’ve seen him do.  We killed an entire tavern full of men once because they wanted to trade a chicken for a night of taking turns with me.  We’ve killed more men together than you’ve probably seen dead in your life.”

Gendry rolled his eyes up at her.  “I’ve seen the army of the dead, milady.”

Arya smirked down at him.  “Well, maybe not then.  For the love of the Seven, Gendry, would you call me by my name?”

“Of course, Lady Clegane.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Gendry pulled the leather thong snug across Arya’s chest.  “It really doesn’t bother you, does it?  You being a highborn lady, him being . . . not.  Him being what he is?”

Arya glanced over her shoulder at Sandor.  “I never wanted to be a lady, and he has no interest in being a lord.  He took care of me for months after I ran from the Brotherhood.”  She shrugged.  “By the time Sandor fell in the Riverlands, he probably knew me better than my own father.”

Gendry glanced up guiltily from tying the knot to record the distance around her waist.  He fingered the knot and frowned, tipping his head. 

“What’s wrong?”

He frowned.  “I should have gone with you.  Things would have turned out different.”

“Maybe.  I think the Many Faced God would have brought Sandor back to me one way or another.  I’m not really suitable for anyone else.”

Robett Glover’s booming baritone was hard to ignore, “ . . . If anyone could handle her vicious tongue and violent nature, I’m sure you can.  She’ll need a heavy hand, to be sure . . .”

Gendry took the measurement around Arya’s hips and frowned again.  “How did you manage to get married in the middle of running from the wights?  I’ll bet the king was none too pleased.”

“Jon accepted it.  That’s all that matters.”

“ . . . in the North, there’s no shame in taking certain liberties to take difficult women in hand.  I’m sure you’ll have no trouble bending her to your will.”

 Arya gritted her teeth together.  “Are we done here?”

Gendry had laid her brigadine on his table and was using the strip of leather to transfer measurements onto the brigadine.  He’d opened his mouth to answer Arya when Sandor’s deep rumble interrupted.

“A wolf bitch is like any other.  Put something in her mouth and stroke her, and she’ll lay at your feet the rest of her life.”

Arya took a slow deep breath.

Gendry didn’t look up from his work though he had gone very still.  Quietly, he murmured, “Arya, are you sure?”  From the corner of his eye, he glanced towards Sandor.  “It’s not too late for the king—“

“To have my husband flayed?”  Arya pressed her eyes shut, seething.  “Believe me, I can do it myself.”

Arya smiled at the memory as she pawed through the snow around her boots.  Coarse and unrefined, Sandor would always be better at playing the game of thrones than she ever would be.  He had the sense to listen and know when something needed said to twist someone to his advantage.  The Faceless Men had tried to teach her, but in the end, her passionate nature always got the better of her.

Frustrated, she sat up and shook out the mail.  When nothing fell out, she pulled it on, and was surprised to find that Gendry had made it significantly larger.

“Seven hells,” she murmured, “I’m not going to grow that much.”

She pulled on the brigadine, and she noticed that in addition to reducing the bulk so that it followed her curves without sacrificing any of the steel plates, he’d removed the traditional northern lacing and instead added clasps similar to the ones on Sandor’s southern brigadine.  It too, was somewhat larger than she’d expected.  Disappointed, she retraced her steps, kicking at the snow.

Finally she found it near the mouth of the tent, where it must have slipped from the parcel.  As the sky lightened, the shadows receded and Arya could distinguish the gleam of newly forged steel from the frozen sludge.  She turned it between her fingers, admiring the craftsmanship.  It was flawless:  a wide steel band bearing a direwolf and a hound, separated by crossed blades.  She turned the band and was pleased to see that Gendry had even taken the time to engrave “Honor from the Ashes” inside the band. 

Arya had reached her hand out towards the flap of the tent when the night went suddenly silent.  She glanced down at the steel band in her hand, and watched horrified as frost crawled across its surface in seconds.  Arya turned, glancing around her, and saw the mist crawling rapidly over the ground, weak fires being extinguished in its wake. 

Horrified, Arya screamed, “Walkers!”


	29. The Call of the Current

Sandor had charged out of their tent, fully armored within seconds.  “Are you sure?”

Arya gaped around them as men scrambled to find weapons and claim their mounts in the dark.  “They’re coming.”

Sandor shoved her sword belt into her right hand and grabbed her left hand.  “Move, damn you!  We’re too few to survive if we stand and fight.  We’ve got to find our horses!”

Arya grabbed her satchel of faces and threw it across her body before he drug her away from their tent.  Sandor handed Arya her wolf pelt coat, and they struggled into their furs as they ran.  Sandor cut their horses’ reins free from the line where they’d been tied, but before he could mount, Arya caught his hand.

“Wait, just in case—“  She shoved the ring onto the index finger of his sword hand.

Sandor met her eyes for just a second before he made a stirrup with his hands.  She stepped into them, and he threw her into her saddle.  “Ride!  Ride south and don’t look back.”

“But—“

Sandor swung up into his own saddle.  “I’m right behind you.”

When the disoriented soldiers saw the two of them tear out of the camp, they quickly followed suit.  Though the hooves of at least a dozen horses were soon pounding the packed ice behind them, minutes after they left camp behind, the screaming started . . . and then it stopped.  Arya wasn’t sure how long they’d ridden, glancing behind every few seconds, but by the time they’d outrun the fog, the horses were lathered and winded.

Eight of their ten men had found their mounts in time, including Irrun.  The remaining seven men were all Dothraki.  Arya looked at Sandor horrified.  Jon wasn’t here.

“We’ve got to go back for Jon.”

“No.”  When Arya turned her horse back towards the camp, Sandor grabbed the horse’s bridle and savagely jerked the gelding’s head.  “Arya, no!  If he survived, he’ll meet us in Dragonstone.  We’ve no idea how many got out and simply fled a different direction.”  He glanced up at one of the Dothraki who nodded in agreement.  “We will follow the Queensroad south to the Crossroads and then follow the coast to Maidenpool.  If we don’t find him by then, we’ll cross Crackclaw Point until we can find a boat to ferry us to Dragonstone.  The dead are too close to waste precious time chasing after men who might already be dead.”

Arya clenched her jaw.  He was right, of course he was right.  She took a shuddering breath, and with a last glance over her shoulder, allowed Sandor to lead them back towards the Queensroad.  The margin between the dead and Cersei Lannister had become far too tight.

* * *

Sandor guided their party more or less along the Queensroad, but numerous times detoured away from tendrils of gathering mist.  The Dothraki had begun to question Sandor, jeering that he was an old woman scared of a bit of fog.  It was true that in the winter, a dense morning fog was common enough, especially around open water and wide rivers, but Sandor wasn’t taking any chances.  He assumed that every scrap of fog foretold the dead.  If he was wrong, there was no harm in it.  If he was right, the dead were still far too close.

By midmorning, they were only an hour’s ride from Harroway when tendrils of fog seemed to be surrounding them on all sides.  Nervously, Sandor caught Arya’s eye

“Let’s follow the river.  If we’re lucky, maybe we can find a flat boat to follow the Green Fork the rest of the way.”

Within minutes, however, the fog had thickened into a dense wall of gray that blotted out the weak northern sun.  Sandor had kicked his exhausted mount into another breathless run, and he goaded the animal as far as he dared into the icy river.  The fog continued to coalesce, and the Dreadfort men and Dothraki pressed together in the river, hoping the dead would pass by before their mounts froze and collapsed beneath them into the freezing water.

It was Arya, watching the eastern shore, who noticed the ice spreading across the surface of the river.

“Sandor, we have to move.  They’re going to freeze the river!” 

Again, they spurred their mounts south, following the course of the river.  Irrun’s horse, running just behind Arya’s and closer to the center of the river, took a wrong step, and they both plunged into its icy depths.  One of the Dothraki stopped and pulled Irrun out of the water, but it was the mistake the dead had been waiting for.  Abruptly, the fog lifted, and Arya saw hundreds of wights lining both banks of the Green Fork. 

“Arya!”

Just on the other side of the Red Fork, perhaps a hundred yards south, Arya saw him.  Jon was alone, and a single White Walker was bearing down on him, swinging an enormous blade like a scythe.  She scanned the ranks of wights around her, and saw no other Walkers.

“Sandor, there’s only one Walker, if we can get to him—“

“All the rest will fall.”  Sandor grabbed Arya’s coat and drug her nearly from her saddle to kiss her fiercely.  She pulled back, too surprised to stop him when he ripped her sword from its scabbard.  “I love you.”

Sandor turned his horse and charged down the river, slapping his horse on its rump viciously with the flat of her blade to spur it to greater speed.

“Come on!  We’ve got to help them!”

Irrun’s cry spurred Arya into action, and the remaining survivors of the wight attack raced to follow their commander to aid their king.  The banks of the river had become a roiling, snarling tangle of the dead, inching onto the ice as it formed.

Arya barely noticed the encroachment of the dead or her faltering horse struggling to draw breath from the icy air.  She watched breathlessly as Sandor leapt from his horse onto the icy bank mere feet from where the Walker had nearly pressed Jon into the rushing river.  He came up from the snow slashing wildly, but the Walker turned from Jon and met Sandor’s blade.  The Valyrian steel screamed when it met the Walker’s ice blade, but it did not shatter, and Sandor managed to turn the enormous blade away a hair’s breath before it cleft through his body.

Behind them, Jon staggered to his feet.  Even with thirty yards between them, Arya could see he was pale and barely able to stand.  She screamed obscenities at the gods and her winded mount, desperate to reach her husband and brother.  Jon stumbled forward and made a feeble slash at the Walker, who simply stepped out of the way of his attack.  As Sandor threw himself at the Walker, pushing him back, Jon seemed to rally, and together, they were able to pursue him a few feet back down the banks of the Red Fork.  Sandor was able to slide around the Walker’s flank, and when he raised his blade to slash at Jon, Sandor plunged Arya’s Valyrian blade between the White Walker’s ribs. 

As the Walker and his army of wights collapsed, a wide grin split Sandor’s face.  He turned to say something to Jon, and the ice beneath his feet crumbled, and he fell backwards into the icy depths of the tumbling waters.

Somehow, Arya’s feet found the bank, and she was flying across the snow.  Distant voices screamed her name, but none of them were Sandor’s, and it was only his call that she would have answered.  She plunged down the icy bank, intending to follow her husband into the water, but she was abruptly slammed to the ground.  At first, Arya thought a wight had grabbed her, and she twisted beneath the hot, writhing mass above her with her Valyrian daggar out, slashing at anything that moved.  It wasn’t a wight . . . it was so much worse.  It was Jon.

“Arya, no!  He’s gone!”

Arya was completely crazed.  She fought with everything she had left, slashing with her dagger, clawing with her nails, kicking.  Jon finally wrenched her knife from her hand and hauled her to her feet.  He shoved her away from the bank, and Irrun ran forward to grab her.  Arya immediately doubled back, frantic to find Sandor. 

Jon wrapped his arms around her waist and hauled her back again from the icy river bank.  They fell into the snow, and Arya clawed at the ice to get away from her brother.  As she scrabbled against the ice, Jon grabbed one of her ankles, and she slammed the heel of her boot into his face.  He released her, but two of the Dreadfort men grabbed Arya and hauled her back just as her fingertips splashed into the icy water.  She twisted and cursed and clawed as they pulled her back from its depths.  With every stride that bore her back to safety, the river carried her lover, her heart’s blood, deeper into its icy embrace.

“Nnnnoo!  Sandor!  No!  Let me go!  I won’t leave him!”

“It’s too late!  He’s gone!”

Arya wriggled her arm out of her furs, and her men dropped her.  She rolled and instantly was on the run, sprinting back to the bank where she’d seen Sandor fall into the water.  An enormous weight tackled her from behind, but she grabbed up her sword from where Sandor had dropped it in the moments before the river swallowed him.  Arya slashed blindly, past caring who she’d cut or how badly.  The icy current screamed her name, and it sounded like Sandor.  She’d kill anyone that tried to come between her and her husband again.

“Seven Hells, Arya!”  Through her rage, she barely recognized Jon’s voice.

Arya blindly pushed off Jon’s bulk when his grasp of her suddenly loosened.  Her foot plunged into a pocket of soft snow and she stumbled against a downed tree buried beneath the ice.  She grabbed the protruding branches to pull herself up, but before she could take another step, pain exploded across the back of her skull.  Arya sank into an icy darkness, screaming silently for her lost husband.

* * *

Arya woke to her head being bounced against the rough boards of a cart.  She pulled herself up on its edge, but immediately retched over the edge.  It was nearly dusk.

“Sandor?”

The cart stopped abruptly, and voices yelled for the king.  Every sound was amplified tenfold, and she was sure her head would explode at any moment.  Jon’s face swam into focus, but she clumsily slapped him away.

“No.  I want Sandor.  The fuck is he?”  Arya could barely keep her eyes open as pain sheared through her head. 

“Leave us.”  Jon knelt in the snow beside the cart, and Arya swung her legs over its edge, her stomach threatening to heave with every movement.  He grabbed her by the shoulder.  “Arya, what do you remember?”

“Seven Hells, Jon.”  She cracked an eye open to glare at her brother.  “Go find Sandor for me.”  Arya scooted to the edge of the cart, intending to stand, but as soon as her feet were beneath her, her head began to swim.  Jon pressed her gently back down.

“Arya, he’s gone.”

“What?”  She blinked several times at Jon.  “The fuck have you sent him this time?  I told him if he went ranging again, I wanted to—“

“He’s gone.”  Jon held Arya by the shoulders and gently repeated, “He’s gone.  Almost two days have passed since he fell into the river.” 

Arya rounded on Jon.  “Two days!  He could be dead by now!  Did you even try to go back and find him?”

“Gods, Arya, yes!  He’s your husband!  We searched as long as we could, but another wave of wights was right behind, and we had to run lest we be overrun by the dead again.  We barely got away from the wights before running into a watch of Lannisters.  We’ve been running ever since, trying to get to Widow’s Ford to get a boat into the Bay of Crabs.”

Arya reached for her sword, and was furious to see that it was gone.  She grabbed a long wooden stave from the back of the cart and advanced on Jon.  Though her head still throbbed as though an iron rod had been hammered through it, her vision had become crystalline, and she could see only Jon.  “You let him fall, and you didn’t try to find him.  You left him for dead, or worse, left him to become a wight.  He saved you, you worthless cunt, and you didn’t even go back to burn his body.”

Jon backed slowly away.  “There was nothing we could have done.  He went into the water.  No one could have survived more than a few minutes in there, and he never came out.”  Arya narrowed her eyes and closed in on her brother.  “I swear before the gods, if there was anything we could have done, we’d have done it!”

Arya continued advancing on Jon.  “Do you have any idea how many ways I know to send a man to the Many Faced God?”  Jon swallowed and shook his head slightly.  “Some of them are fast and painless, and some of them cause agony and take weeks.  You’d better hope that I find my husband, Jon Snow, because if I don’t, I’m going to come find you instead.  When I do, you won’t see my face until the very end, but I’ll make sure you burn for days before I release you to the one god.”

Jon clenched his lips together.  “I’m not going to let you do that.  You’re my sister and I lo—“

Arya slammed the stave into Jon’s knee.  He crumpled into the ice with a cry of pain.  Arya pulled Jon’s knife from his belt, slammed her knee into his chest, and pressed the blade against his throat.

“I haven’t been Arya Stark for a long time, and your folly has now robbed me of being Arya Clegane too.”  Arya’s lips trembled, and she ground her molars together, but she couldn’t stop the tears that crept down her cheeks into her furs.  She groaned in agony and rage.  “I’m not your sister.  I’m no one.” 

One of the Dreadfort men crept closer, and Arya twitched her wrist.  The knife cut neatly through Jon’s skin, but no further.  Between her teeth, Arya hissed, “Do not test me.  We were supposed to die together.  You were supposed to burn us together so we’d face the Many Faced God together.”

Jon raised his hand to forestall the soldier.  He commanded quietly, “Bring her sword and her horse.”  He looked up at Arya with an expression of such misery and regret that for a second, she almost wavered, almost forgave him.  Quietly enough that only the two of them and the wind would hear his words, Jon murmured, “With all my heart, I hope you find him.  If you don’t, I’ll gladly give you my life in exchange.”

When her horse was brought, Arya eased back off her brother’s chest and ripped the horse’s reigns out of the man’s hand.  Somewhere in a very quiet, rational corner of her mind, she registered that it was Irrun who had brought her horse and that he wept silently as he backed away from her.  Glaring down at Jon, she answered, “For your sake, I hope I find him.”

Arya mounted her horse and gave the low whistle that Sandor used to summon Stranger.  The horse’s shrill cry went up somewhere amongst what remained of their party along with a shout of pain, and Stranger came thundering through the snow to meet her.  Arya grabbed Stranger’s trailing reins and led him away into the night without a second glance at her brother, the men of the Dreadfort, or what remained of the realm of the living.  For all she cared, the wights could devour them all and overrun the viper’s nest that was the entirety of Westeros, so long as she got her husband back.


	30. Swish, Swish, Swish

Arya rode through the night and all the way through midday, following the coast until it led her back to the heart of the Trident where the Red Fork meets the Green.  When she finally found the place where Sandor had fallen into the water, it was as Jon had said.  A rime of ice had formed over the surface of the river, and as far as she followed its course, there was no sign of a man clawing his way out of the water.  For three days, she rode up and down the bank, looking for any sign of where he could have emerged, but found nothing.  She searched deep into the woods, and even braved crossing the ice on foot to check the other side of the river.  On the fourth day, she woke to find her horse dead, frozen in the night.

Arya cut away a haunch of horseflesh to sustain her and burned the rest of the poor beast.  Though she knew too many days had passed, she hoped Sandor would see her fire and come to her.  She waited until the ashes were cold, imploring the old gods, begging the Seven, bargaining with the Many Faced God, sobbing in the snow.  He never came.  Finally, she mounted Stranger and turned his head towards the sea.

She could barely stir herself to find the energy to eat on the voyage to Braavos, and by the time she reached her destination, she was delirious.  On the day that a bright green conflagration lit up the sky, she turned her back to the west, away from the horizon that was her homeland.  When the sailors wondered what it could mean, that the fire burned day and night for over a week, she laid curled into a tiny crevice at the bow of the ship and covered her ears.  What difference did it make that Westeros had been saved by her clever, clever bastard brother, when the man who had saved her brother had been lost to the icy maw of the Red Fork?

She insisted that Stranger be ferried with her to the House of Black and White, unwilling to give up her husband’s horse until she had to, and Arya left Stranger standing before its entrance.  She stumbled against the stone, dragging herself on bloodied knees up the final steps.  She barged into the temple and stumbled across the floor, intending to plunge her face into the strangler’s pool and drink it dry.  Before she could take more than a few steps across the floor, strong, familiar hands wrapped around her shoulders and stopped her.

“A girl does not belong here.  Why is she here?”

Arya slumped at Jaqen’s feet, and the slinking of her too snug mail against the floor echoed through the cavernous chamber.  She was past caring if it was Jaqen or another Faceless Man wearing his likeness.  She was ready for the judgment of the Many Faced God.

Through parched and cracked lips, she mumbled, “A girl is no one.  A girl has no need of her face.  She has come to give it to the Many Faced God and repay her debts.”

Jacqen looked her over, alarmed.  He gathered her into his arms as though she weighed nothing.  “The Many Faced God is not ready to claim your face, or he’d have taken it already.  A girl cannot offer two faces, when the one god only gave her one.”

Arya barely noticed or cared where Jaqen carried her, and as the familiar shadows of the House of Black and White flickered over her face, she lost consciousness.  When she woke, Arya was unsurprised to find herself in her old quarters, precisely as she had left them.  Jaqen was there, waiting in the thick shadows.  He pressed a cup of tepid water between her hands and guided it to her lips.

Much of the water dribbled from between her cracked lips, but Jaquen held it in place until he saw her throat bob as she swallowed. 

Softly, he asked, “What is a girl’s name?”

Arya barely had the energy to push the words past her parched throat.  “No one.”

Jaqen tapped her shoulder with a dried reed.  He barely touched her.

“A girl looks like Arya Stark.  What is a girl’s name?”

 _Stark_ . . . a tear welled and slid down her cheek.  The salt of the tear burned its way down her wind ravaged cheek.  Barely able to voice the words, she answered, “No one.”

Tap.  “You are Arya Stark.”

“I am no one.”

A slightly harder tap, not yet hard enough to sting.  “You are Arya Stark.”

“Not anymore.”  Another tear escaped her lashes, and Jaqen narrowed his eyes.

Shrewdly, he surmised, “You became someone else.”

Arya sniffled and sucked in a shuddering breath.  “For a time, a girl was Arya Clegane, but that life is gone.  A girl is finally ready to be no one.”

Jaqen let that lie a while, and Arya sat motionless, trying to breathe in the stillness of the temple and wall up her roiling emotions.  Her ragged breaths echoed off the stones of her tiny cell.  She knew the Game of Faces wasn’t over, and she waited patiently.

“Who was Arya Clegane?”

Arya’s lips trembled, but she answered evenly, “The wife of the Hound.”

“A girl was confused about the Hound.  She was not sure if she wanted him to live or die.  Did a girl take the Hound’s life?”

Arya looked up at Jaqen and shook her head.  “The Many Faced God took him from me again.  He is no one now too.”

Softly, he asked, “Did a girl love the Hound?”

Arya dipped her head low so her face would be shrouded by her lank hair.  “The Hound’s wife loved him.”  Arya bit her lower lip to stop it from trembling, but she gasped, “Very much.”  Overcome, Arya gulped for air as though drowning and tried desperately to choke back her sobs.  “The Many Faced God took him away from a girl.”  Bitterly, she spat, “Again.  A girl is empty now.  A girl is ready to be no one.  A girl came to give her face to the Many Faced God.”

Jaqen frowned.  “Where is the Hound’s face?”

“A girl does not know.”

“Then how does a girl know the Many Faced God has taken it?”

“A girl saw.  A girl knows.”

Jaqen slammed the reed across Arya’s hands hard enough to snap it.  She flinched, but otherwise did not move.  Burning pain radiated up her arms.

For the first time, Jaqen was truly angry with her.  “If a girl had seen, a girl would have known.  A girl did not look hard enough.”  Arya met Jaqen’s eyes, and she could not hide her horror that he might be right.  After what seemed like an age, his voice softened and he continued, “The Many Faced God fooled a girl before.  Perhaps he has fooled her again.  What is your name?”

“No one.”

Jaqen whipped the half of the reed still in his hand across Arya’s knuckles.  White hot pain skittered up her arms from her broken bones, but she neither cried out nor flinched.

“You are Arya Clegane.”

“A girl was Arya Clegane.  The Many Faced God took Sandor—“  Arya choked on her husband’s name.  “—the Hound.  A girl cannot be Arya Clegane now.  A girl is no one.”

Jaqen nodded slowly, finally satisfied that he had the full truth.  “A girl remembers how to sweep?”

“A girl remembers how to sweep.”

Jaqen stood and looked down at her, but Arya could not summon the strength to meet his gaze.  “Tomorrow, a girl will sweep.  Perhaps she will remember her name.”

Arya nodded.  “A girl will sweep, but a girl has no name.  A girl is no one.”

“Perhaps.  We shall see.”

* * *

 _Swish, swish, swish_.  How many times had she swept this floor?  It did not matter.  A girl did not count.  Time stretches on into eternity for a girl when she is no one.  There is no need to mark its passage.  She had stopped even taking note of when people came to sit at the strangler’s pool. 

Once, a lifetime ago, she’d watched for tall men, broad men, strong men who could carry a felled tree on their shoulder, but when one came, it was never the right one.  In the eternal shadows and dark of the House of Black and White, time has no meaning, and she stopped watching.  Now she saw only the stone beneath her broom, heard only its rasp across the floor.  _Swish, swish, swish._

First, a girl had stopped addressing the visitors at the black pool, and then she stopped talking at all.  A nameless girl had no need of a voice.  All that existed was the dark, the broom, the floor, and the heaviness of her body.  While she swept, she longed for the one god to take her; when she slept, she longed for her lost husband.  Sweeping and sleeping.  These were all that remained for a nameless, faceless girl.  _Swish, swish, swish_. 

A man named Jaqen and not named Jaqen watched her sweep every day now.  The weight of her flesh made her slow, and a girl longed for the floor to swallow her whole.  Jaqen was there when an exceptionally tall man came in.  A girl paused and watched him limp across the chamber.  He had long hair and broad shoulders like her husband had had.  Her husband . . . can a nameless girl have a husband?  Had he had a name?  Sandor Clegane . . . that had been his name, but the Many Faced God had taken his face, and now his name was lost and meaningless.  The waters of the Trident had washed it away.  _Swish, swish, swish_.

Once, a man named Jaqen and not named Jaqen had sent her to fetch back a face for the Many Faced God.  When she left the House of Black and White, she could not find the face Jaqen had sent her to find.  Instead, a girl saw her husband’s face everywhere she looked.  A girl’s husband was gone.  A girl stopped leaving the House of Black and White.  A girl stopped looking for her husband in the face of every man she passed.  A girl bowed her head and watched her broom upon the floor.  _Swish, swish, swish_.

The man sat at the side of the strangler’s pool and dipped his hand into the water, but he did not drink.  Instead, he splashed it on his face.

Jaqen approached the man.  “You have tried to give your face to the Many Faced God many times, and still, he does not want it.”

The man looked up wearily.  “Too fucking ugly.  Only person that never minded was my wife.”  Arya looked up from her sweeping.  The man’s voice was deep, and the heaviness within her shifted.  He almost sounded like . . . “The Stranger won’t take me until I find her.  I promised her they would burn us together in the North.  I won’t rest until I find her.”

Jaqen nodded sympathetically.  “Where is your wife?”

The man watched the candlelight shimmer across the strangler’s pool.  He shook his ragged head slowly.  “I don’t know.  I fell in the war against the dead, but someone pulled me from the river.  I’ve been looking for her ever since.  I checked at Winterfell and at King’s Landing, and this is the last place I can think of to look for her.  I think . . . I think that if she survived, she’d have come here to find her master.  She’d have come here looking for Jaqen H’ghar.”

A girl’s heart stopped beating, and she could not breathe.

Jaqen glanced slyly at the girl with the broom, but she could not make her feet move.  “What is your wife’s name?”

The man laughed hoarsely.  “Her mother named her Arya, but she used to tell me that she was no one, except to the Many Faced God and to me.”

“You have travelled a long way to get here.  Do you thirst?”

“Aye.”

Jaqen knelt at the pool and filled a small bowl from the strangler’s pool.  The bowl floated closer to the man’s lips, and he tipped it up to drink. 

* * *

The icy, racing current pulled Sandor to the bottom of the river, and the weight of his armor, his brigadine and mail, the gorget and pauldrons that Arya always complained were too heavy and didn’t keep her warm, kept him there, lodged beneath the heavy branch of a fallen oak.  Sandor Clegane fought with every ounce of strength left to him, but the cold drank it up like mead.  He fought against the current, against the cold black branches that shattered but refused to relinquish their hold, against the buckles of the armor that weighed him down.  He fought against the Stranger’s cloak that threatened to close around him.

_One day the Stranger will call me, and I’ll have no choice but to follow . . ._

Before long, the cold wasn’t so cold, and the icy spikes of steel in his lungs weren’t so sharp, and somewhere in the soft dark that was enveloping him, he was sure that he heard his wife’s voice.  He turned away from the cold and the light and squinted into the dark warmth, and he stepped towards that voice.

_Sssssandorrrrr . . ._

His heart expanded tenfold, and his ribs snapped silently when he heard her whispering his name in his ear, her body pressed against his, and her breath warm against his neck.  His hands were in her hair, and the taste of her was on his tongue, and the sound of his name upon her lips was in his ear.  Gods, that was the sweetest sound in all the world . . . it was warm honey dripping from the comb and sweet summer days with the sun baking the wheat and it was everything that ever would be or could be home to him . . . and then there was no sound any more at all . . .

 . . . but then there was pain, terrible pain, biting and gnawing and chewing through every fiber of his body.  Gods the cold . . . it was inside him and around him . . . he clawed his way through it, but it slithered away to grasp at him from another angle.  He coughed and spluttered and gasped at air, blessed air.  He’d forgotten its sweet frozen taste across his tongue as it burned and sliced through his ragged throat.

All was confusion, jagged shadows sharpening their knives against broad oceans of cold white light.  In the light there were hands with fingers like talons, and they clawed him out of the warm darkness where Arya called his name, and he wept for her.  He pressed his face into snow and ice, and moaned her name into the frozen wasteland of the bottommost of the seven hells, far from the sweet warmth that had been her arms and her love.  With every breath, he called for his wife, and he choked on her name.

“Oh, for the love of the Seven, shut up!”

Bewildered, Sandor Clegane pried open leaden eyes that had crusted shut with ice.  He shrank back in fear as a crone, beautiful and terrible, familiar yet changed beyond all recognition crouched over him, her handsome features contorted in rage.  Something about those eyes narrowed in hate, something about the lips twisted in disdain, and his wife’s lovely face swam before his eyes, replacing the features of the crone.  Desperately, he reached trembling hands for the vision.

“Arya, sweetling, is that you?”

Suddenly his head was splitting wide open like a ripe melon, and darkness enveloped him again.  In his dreams, Sandor searched for his sweet, dark beauty, but whenever he reached for her, she was gone like smoke.

Fire.  Sandor groaned.  Surely, this was his penance, to be drug through every level of the seven hells, first through ice, and now through the fire.  As his muddled mind staggered towards consciousness, he registered the sound of fire, but not its heat. 

When Sandor finally opened his eyes in earnest, white branches crowned with blood red leaves sheltered him from the cruel winter sky.  Gods . . . the wights . . . fear frizzled through his sluggish mind.

“Arya!”  Sandor’s swollen throat rasped over her name, and he scrabbled against the ice and leaf mould at the base of a weirwood tree as he tried to claw his way to his feet.  His long fingers found their way into a deep groove of the tree . . . the mouth of a heart tree.  He looked wildy around him.  “Arya!”

A cold voice hissed, “Who is Arya Stark to you?”

“Arya!  Where is Arya?  I’ve got to find her . . .”

“Why?”  A crone in a midnight blue gown approached, one hand pressed to her throat.  She knelt beside him and slammed Sandor against the trunk of the heart tree with the strength of ten men.  “Who is Arya Stark to you?”

Though her face was shrouded by her deep hood, Sandor knew who he’d find there.  With trembling fingers, he pushed the hood back, and there beneath was the ravaged visage of his mother by marriage, the once lovely and passionate Lady Catelyn Stark.

Sandor pressed his eyes shut and gasped for breath.  “Clegane . . . Lady Arya Clegane.  My wife.  If she survived the wights, she’s still my wife.”

“Lies!”

He found the ring Arya had shoved on his finger in their last frenzied moments together.  It slid easily off his frigid finger, and he was grateful he’d not lost it when he fell into the river.  He turned the ring, seeing it himself for the very first time.  Sandor smiled weakly.

“A direwolf and a hound, separated by crossed blades . . . the sigil of the Dreadfort Cleganes, and the symbol of our joined houses, Stark and Clegane.”

Catelyn twisted the steel band from between his slack fingers.  He allowed his head to loll against the trunk of the weirwood and smiled beatifically.  Gods, he loved that woman . . .

“And your words?”  Lady Stoneheart’s voice was cold, brittle glass.

“Honor . . . from the ashes.”

Her cold eyes bored into Sandor, and she demanded, “Did you love my daughter?”

“Aye.  I’ll love her until the Stranger takes me.”

“Did she love you?”

Clegane narrowed his eyes at Lady Stoneheart.  “Aye.”  He seized his ring from between Catelyn’s shriveled fingers and slid it back onto his finger.  He twisted it so that the direwolf was on top, the hound hidden from sight.  “She said she did.  Enough to follow me to war against the wights.  Enough to defy her brother to warm my bed and take vows before a heart tree.”

The crone’s face softened, and something of Catelyn Stark returned to her cold eyes.  She looked up into the branches of the weirwood above them.  “Then I’m sure she does.  I’ve never known my daughter to lie about anything that really mattered, and my husband always swore no man can lie before a heart tree.”

He nodded slowly.  “Aye.  She told me she tried to lie about me to the Faceless Men many times, but Jaqen always caught her.  No matter how hard she tried, the truth always stuck in her throat.  Maybe the old gods wouldn’t let her lie there either.”  He stared blindly into the bloodied boughs above them.  “Gods, I love that woman.”

* * *

A girl’s feet carried her across the floor as though they had wings.  A girl slapped the bowl away, and it smashed upon the floor.

The man looked up at a girl, and Jaqen said, “You have deprived our visitor of the Many Faced God’s gift.  What is your name?”

A girl caught up the warrior’s hand and pressed it against the voluptuous swell of her taught belly that he might feel his son kicking against his touch.  A girl opened her mouth to speak, but it had been many months since words had crossed her tongue.  At first, her throat would yield no sound.  Her words sounded like rust and cobwebs, but the man recognized her just the same.

“Arya . . . Clegane.”  The man seized her hips and pulled her closer.  He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face against her belly, against the burgeoning evidence of her love.  His tears soaked into the coarse fabric of her dress, and their warmth seeped into her chilled flesh.  Arya’s trembling fingers wound themselves into his hair and clutched him against her body, lest he was a mirage, lest the Many Faced God tear him away from her again.

“Who is Arya Clegane?”

Sandor stood and gathered her into his arms, and even in her advanced pregnancy, he lifted her as though she weighed nothing.  He kissed her hungrily, and Arya emerged panting.

Jaqen watched patiently, the corner of his lips curling slightly.  When she surfaced, he quietly queried again, “Who is Arya Clegane?”

Arya pressed her hands to Sandor’s face, still unable to believe that he had come at last.  “I am.  I am Arya Clegane, the wife of the Hound.”


	31. True Knight

When Arya had started screaming, Sandor had started drinking, and now he was so pissed he could barely stand.  No matter where Sandor went within the Dreadfort, his tiny lover’s screams echoed off the blackened stones while she tried to push his monstrous whelp from her body.  He’d seen her broken and bloody and too tired to sit her horse, but never had Arya made a sound like that.  By the Seven, he was sure the babe would kill her.

She had labored since sundown, and now it was midmorning.  Sandor leaned against the well in the courtyard and slammed his fist against the rime of ice that had formed in the bucket of water on its ledge.  He splashed his face, trying to sober up.  He didn’t need the reproachful glances from the maids and the men at arms and fucking Sansa to feel ashamed.  He already loathed himself for what he’d put Arya through.  The only thing keeping his blade from his own throat was an unlikely but glittering hope hanging just out of reach that his beloved might survive the ordeal of being his wife.

Sandor sat down heavily on a stool beside the well.  Arya sat here most days fletching arrows because it was the closest anyone would let her get to taking up arms since they’d returned to the Dreadfort.  At first, she had been furious, but since the weight of the babe made her hips and back ache, she had been forced to concede that she had no choice but find some kind of useful occupation while seated. 

Sansa had suggested embroidery, but Arya had given her sister the filthiest possible glare before hauling herself down to the courtyard to fletch arrows.  From this position, Arya could see both the targets at the end of the courtyard and the sparring ring, from where she could shout encouragement, suggestions, and jeer as the situation demanded.

“If you stand there like a fucking cow, of course he’s going to stick you with his blade.  Get the fuck out of the way, and stop crying about it, you fool!”

Sandor smiled as he pulled one of her arrows from the barrel at his knee and examined it.  Based on its length, he knew she’d fletched it specifically for him, still hoping that she could teach him to shoot well enough to make him a useful hunting partner.

Though winter was still only in its infancy, soft northern light broke through the clouds and warmed his face.  Sandor closed his eyes and lifted his chin, enjoying the scant warmth the sun brought.  In his mind’s eye, he saw her, the only vision that had ever satisfied. 

When Sandor had brought Arya out of the House of Black and White, at first, he had thought she wasn’t real.  He was afraid someone else had taken her face.  Once her tongue had really warmed up and had flayed his ears properly, Sandor was certain that he had his wife back and had been unable to stop grinning at her like a drunken fool.  At one point, she’d even asked if he’d struck his head when he fell into the river. 

Still, Sandor had been unsure.  He’d been afraid of the child growing within her, and he’d been afraid to touch her.  Sandor had no idea what to do with a woman heavy with child, least of all his woman, his child.  This new Arya seemed precious and delicate, likely to break if he embraced her.  Considering anything further seemed like the depths of depravity.

He had wanted to ride as far as possible from the House of Black and White, but when Arya had seemed too exhausted to ride further, he’d found them a room in a tiny inn.  When she took off her clothes, Sandor had been unable to tear his eyes away, and building desire warred with fear of damaging his wife and growing child.  He was ashamed to want her, but he thought he’d die of the wanting. 

When Arya had kissed Sandor, his resolve to not touch her had almost broken immediately.  Arya had coaxed him, teased him, stripping away every objection along with his armor, and finally, he allowed her to lead him to the narrow bed.  With his wife astride his hips and his cock buried into her sweet, warm depths, Sandor was sure he was dreaming.  The late afternoon light caught and tangled in Arya’s hair, and she was rosy with the exertion of their lovemaking. 

Arya spread her hands across Sandor’s chest and allowed him to explore the deep curves of her new, ripe body.  He spread his hands across her belly with wonder and weighed her significantly heavier, fuller breasts in his palms.  Arya responded eagerly to his slightest touch, even squirming and sqeaking satisfyingly as he drew his blunt fingers down her spine.  In those amber, crystalline hours of their reunion, there was a tender, fragile joy between them that Sandor had never known before.  His dark goddess of death had become a golden, burgeoning font of life.  He drank deeply, desperately with parched heart from of the depths of her love. 

The gap in the clouds closed, and the sun’s warmth diminished.  Sandor blinked owlishly, the vision of his beautiful wife, heavy with his child, fading with the faint warmth of the Northern light.  In the calm of the courtyard, birds called to one another from the rooftops and the smith’s hammer rang distantly from another part of the keep.  Blessed peace had descended upon the Dreadfort.  Dread slowly built within the boundaries of his alcohol-muddled mind, and he realized with a start that it was too quiet . . . Arya had stopped screaming.

Sandor dropped Arya’s carefully fletched arrow into the icy sludge at his feet and splashed and slid across the courtyard.  He pounded up the stairs, nearly trampling a maid who screamed and dropped a tray.  Crockery smashed and spun down the hallway amidst a flood of ale.  He tripped over his enormous feet in his headlong charge towards the door of their chambers, and his shoulder slammed into its unrelenting surface.  Sandor tried to wrench the door open, but it was bolted and refused to yield.  He howled incoherently in rage and hammered at the pitted oak.

“Open this fucking door!”  On the other side of the door, he heard distinctly female exclamations of alarm, but still it remained barred.  “Now, damn you!  I’ll find myself one of the surviving Boltons to flay every one of you cunts if you don’t let me see my wife!”

When Sandor’s hammering fists caused the wood at the hinges of the door to splinter, the door suddenly flew open.  He tottered into the room, catching himself on a painted chest at the foot of their bed that had been sent to the Dreadfort with a collection of Catelyn Stark’s things.

Now that he was here, Sandor was almost afraid to lift his head and look at Arya.  He was afraid to find her blood soaking through their bed, his wife broken and lifeless upon her pillow.  He wrapped his fingers over the edge of the trousseau chest so tightly that his knuckles went white.

“You’re a noisy fucker, you know that?”

Sandor drug his eyes away from the pattern of fishes and wolves whimsically painted around the edge of the chest and gaped over the end of their bed, speechless.   Arya was propped up on pillows, wearing one of his new, snowy white sarks.  Dark circles of exhaustion were smudged beneath her eyes, and her skin was pale and clammy.  The neck of the sark draped open, and clasped in her arms was a bundle, rooting and grunting vigorously at her exposed breast.

Sandor didn’t trust his legs to carry him the few feet to her side, so he crawled clumsily around the bed.  He eased himself onto the mattress and reached for his wif

“Milord, you really shouldn’t!  Milady isn’t decent for you to be seeing her in this state!” 

One brave chamber maid rushed forward and took hold of Sandor’s arm, trying to drag him away by force. 

Sandor shook her off and growled angrily, “Who do you think washed the blood off milady’s saddle and out of her trousers when she flowered?  Who do you think explained the way of it since neither her mother nor her sister nor her septa could be bothered to do it?”  He softened his voice and took his wife’s face in his hands.  Arya lifted her brows indulgently and grimaced wryly when he continued, “I’m better acquainted with my wife’s blood than you are.” 

Sansa narrowed her eyes at him.  “You, sir, are drunk—“

“Aye, I’ve been drunk for hours.” 

When another chamber maid tried to insinuate herself between Sandor and Arya to sponge her lady’s face, he slapped her hand away.  Sandor selected a clean cloth from the bedside table and dipped it into a bowl of water to wash his wife’s face himself. 

Arya closed her eyes and laid her head back against the headboard.  “Mmmm.  That feels good.”

More quietly, he asked, “What else has a man to do but drink himself into oblivion when his child is tearing apart the only thing of value he has in the world and he has to listen helpless while his wife screams and screams and screams and bleeds her life out in their bed?”

Arya opened her eyes.  “Seven hells, Sandor, It’s not so bad as all that.”

Sandor planted a scratchy kiss against her damp forehead.  He could taste the salt of her exertion on his lips.  “Aye, from that side of the door, it damn well is.”

Arya smiled softly.  “Stop your whinging, or I’ll not let you hold your son.”

Sansa darted forward.  “Are you sure that’s such a good idea?  What if he drops the baby?”

Arya rolled her eyes.  “For the love of the Mother, he’s not that drunk.”  Arya leaned to the side to see the other women in the room around Sandor’s bulk.  Each one exuded disapproval, mistrust, and general horror at the scene before them.  “If my idiot husband can’t wait until I’m properly bathed to see me, he can damn well bathe me himself.  Leave us.”

Sansa waited for the rest of the servants and the midwife to file out of the room.  When Sandor repositioned himself to lean against their pillows, Arya leaned into his warmth and sighed with contentment.

She wrinkled her nose.  “Gods, you reek.  When was the last time you got so drunk?”

Sandor gathered her more closely against him and laid his head against her damp hair.  “Long time.”  He frowned.  “Blackwater Bay, maybe.  Probably.”  More quietly, hoping that only his wife would hear, he murmured, “Haven’t been scared like that since then.”

Sansa cleared her throat loudly, and Sandor glanced up at his sister by marriage in deepest annoyance.  “Shall I stay then?”

Instantly, Sandor growled, “No.”

Arya huffed in amusement.  “I think we’re fine.  I’d be grateful if you could find us something to eat, though.  I’m starving.”

Sansa gave Sandor one last hard look before nodding and turning to leave.

“Do you want to see him?”

Worms writhed in the pit of his stomach, and the small of his back prickled with nervous sweat.  Slowly, Sandor answered, “Aye . . . if you think it’s alright.  After what you went through to get it here, I’d hate to break the babe.”

Arya broke the child’s latch with a gentle tug at his mouth, and the babe popped drowsily off her breast.  Awkwardly, she transferred him to Sandor’s arms, chiding him to support the child’s head.

Nervously, curiously, Sandor stroked the delicate, velvety flesh of the babe’s plump cheek.  He knew nothing of babies.  Once he’d been disfigured, women seemed to always shield their children from Sandor’s gaze, as though ugly were a disease that could be passed on by sight.  Perhaps they thought a dog like him was likely to devour their children.  Sandor frowned.  More likely, they knew the stories of Gregor crushing the skull of the Targaryan babe and wouldn’t be taking any chances with their own precious children.

“You’re sure he’s mine?”

Incredulously, Arya gaped.  “Are you fucking kidding me?  You don’t honestly think I’d have taken another man to my bed?  You killed the only other man stupid enough to try to bed me!”

Realizing the stupidity of what he’d said, Sandor colored richly and stammered, “No, that’s not what I—“

“The midwife said in all her years, she’s never delivered a babe so large!  Of course he’s yours, you fucking idiot!”

Arya pulled back her hand to strike him, but Sandor caught it and brought it to his lips. 

“That’s not what I meant.  He’s . . . perfect.”  The fire drained from Arya’s eyes, and she slouched against her husband.  “I was worried he’d look like . . .”  Sandor shrugged irritably and huffed in frustration.  “I was afraid he’d look like me.  If he didn’t kill you first.”

The babe screwed up its face and let out a mewling cry.  Sandor tensed, every muscle suddenly rigid.  He must have squeezed the child uncomfortably tight, for the child opened up his mouth and begain to wail in earnest.

“By the Seven, what have I done?”

Arya snorted.  “Nothing.  He probably just wants to finish nursing.”

She took the child back and positioned him at her other breast.  Without opening his eyes, the babe rooted frantically for a few seconds before finding her teat and latching on enthusiastically.  Enthralled, Sandor reached out to touch his son again, stroking his calloused fingers down the lad’s face.  Curiously, he peeled back the swaddling blanket to see the rest of his son.  Tiny wrinkled fingers slowly explored the curve of Arya’s breast, and from the hem of the blanket waved an angry red foot with toes clenched.

Thickly, Sandor asked, “What did you call him, then?”

“Eddard.”  Arya was suddenly still.  “I named him Eddard.”

“Aye . . . Eddard.”  He covered the child and tucked the blanket snugly around his son.  “Let’s hope he doesn’t grow up to be an ugly fucker like his father.”

* * *

Sandor woke in the soft golden light of early evening.  Arya had turned into his chest, her fingers clenched in his sark.  Drowsily, he rubbed his wife’s back, grateful that she was well.  When she hummed in pleasure, he pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to her temple.  At some point, someone must have removed his boots and covered them, and he was loath to move from their comfortable pocket of warmth.

Suddenly remembering their son, he raised his head from the pillow and searched the room.  Strewn about the room were various bottles, bowls, and towels, some bloody, left behind when he’d thrown out the household staff.  A tray laden with now cold food was on the bedside table, still untouched.  From the warm shadows in the corner of the room, a soft cooing drew his attention.

Scrubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, he squinted at the figure there.  Nearly blending into the dusky shadows in her deep midnight gown sat Sansa, smiling down at her new nephew.  At first glance, he had seen Lady Catelyn, but Sansa sensed his gaze, and she lifted her sweet smile and sparkling blue eyes to meet his.  Relieved, he laid his head back down and adjusted his shoulders so he could see her properly.  Arya slept on undisturbed.

Sansa sniffed and dabbed at her eyes.  “He’s perfect.  Absolutely perfect.”  She glanced back down at Eddard and smiled broadly.  “Everything we went through . . . everyone who died protecting us . . . it was all for this.  It’s finally over.”

“Aye.  It’s over.”  A fine tremor ran through Arya, and Sandor pulled the wolf pelts up over her shoulder to ward off the chill.  “Think you can get on with your life, now, little bird?”

Sansa laughed quietly.  “Yes, I think I can.”  She brought Eddard up to snuggle him into the hollow of her shoulder and regarded Sandor levelly.  “I think I misjudged you.”

“Aye, well, maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t.”  He searched her face, uncertain of what to say.  Finally, he settled on, “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

“Which part?”

Sandor snorted.  “All of it.  I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, but at least I could save her, for a while anyway.”

Sansa’s eyes travelled over Arya’s prone form, her face slack in sleep and slightly drooling onto Sandor’s shoulder.  She nodded.  “You were what she needed.  You’ve always been what she needed, and I didn’t think Arya Stark needed anyone or anything but her little Needle.”

Sandor stroked his hand over Arya’s hair, smoothing it behind her ear.  Quietly, he corrected, “Clegane.”

“That’s right.  Lady Arya Clegane.”  She tipped her head and smiled softly.  “Who would have guessed that it would have taken the Hound to turn Arya into a lady?  Father promised to marry us to strong, gentle men who would guard us all of our days.  Lords, princes, kings . . . true knights.”

Sandor hmph’ed derisively.  He looked away slightly embarrassed and busied his hands with adjusting the blankets over his wife.

“I’m sorry that I turned away the only true knight I ever met in King’s Landing,” Sandor’s eyes snapped up sharply, and Sansa continued, “but I’m glad my sister had the wisdom to hold onto him instead.  I wish my own matches had been as blessed as hers.”

Eddard started to fuss and root against Sansa’s shoulder, and Arya stirred.  She sat up, and when she reached for her son, Sansa brought Eddard to her.  Sansa turned to go, but before she closed the door behind her, she glanced back.  Arya had brought Eddard to her breast, and mother and father alike watched entranced over their son, unlikely blessing amidst the chaos that had been their lives.

“Take care of them, ser.”

Sandor wrapped his arms more tightly around his family.  “Aye, I will.  Until my very last breath.”


	32. The Pack Survives

The stench was horrendous.  It was a mark of deepest respect for Lady Clegane that the Dreadfort folk followed her wishes at all.  Though many of them were turning green at the effort to not wretch, her personal guard knelt in the mud as the cart passed with solemn reverence.  Irrun, now stooped and gray, wobbled dangerously as he pressed his arthritic knee into the muck.  His features were rigid as he struggled to keep his bottom lip from trembling.  His eyes watered as much from the odor as his grief.

“Are you sure this is what mother wanted?  It seems . . . gruesome.”  Visenya glanced uncertainly up at Eddard.  All of the Clegane children boasted their father’s height, but only Visenya was graced with her aunt’s rich auburn hair.  She lifted her delicate brows.  “Father would never have—“

“From the moment he took mother into his care, every breath he took for the rest of his life was for her.  He fought off the Stranger more times that he could count for love of her.  There is nothing he’d have denied her, certainly not this.”  Eddard turned sad, brown eyes down on his sister.  “Our mother was very clear.  Months ago, she gave her instructions to me, the Maester, Sario—“

Visenya rolled her eyes.  “Of course she told Sario.  He’ll do anything she damn well—“

Eddard growled on unabated, “—and even had a raven sent to cousin Lyanna that if her orders weren’t followed, Lyanna was to ride with the Mormont men in force to retake the Dreadfort and see the deed done personally.”  Visenya snorted softly.  Eddard’s eyes fell on Lyanna Mormont sneering at him from beside the pyre.  “You know as well as I do that the Mormont men would gladly raze the Dreadfort to the ground if they thought a Stark wanted it done.”

“We’re Starks.”

Jaqal murmured softly, “Aye, but not like her.”  He pursed his generous mouth.  “The Mormonts pledged their swords to the Starks of Winterfell for perpetuity.”  Termynd ducked her head and mouthed the word ‘perpetuity’ with amusement.  Jaqal ignored her.  “Some day you may be glad of their allegiance.”

It took six men to maneuver Sandor Clegane’s putrefying corpse, clad in the finest Westerosi plate and mail, onto the pyre.  After torture, numerous wars, wights, epidemics, and famines, it had been a training accident that had felled the infamous warrior in his own courtyard.  Sandor had survived his injury only long enough to tangle his fingers into his wife’s graying hair and whisper his love into their last kiss.  Arya had knelt in a pool of her husband’s blood until it froze, holding his head in her lap, stroking his hair and weeping.  Out of pity, Sario finally shot their mother with a blow dart loaded with sweetsleep so that they could prepare their father’s body for burial.

When Arya woke hours later, Eddard and his siblings realized to their horror the dose of sweetsleep was wholly inadequate.  She had burst out of her chambers, still covered in her husband’s blood and bristling with blades.  In her haze, she didn’t even recognize her youngest son, Jaqal, and he still bore the scars where their grandfather’s Valyrian blade had laid open his chest to the bone.  Never in his life had Eddard seen a woman so crazed with bloodlust.  When she found the fool squire whose arrow had sailed through Sandor’s throat, it took all four of the Clegane brothers to stop their mother from slaughtering the boy. 

The king himself had flown by dragon immediately to the Dreadfort.  Jon alone seemed to be able to reach Arya in the depths of her anguish.  Had he not come, Eddard sincerely doubted anyone in the Dreadfort would have survived his mother’s rage and despair. 

It was Jon who had reminded Arya that Sandor was particularly fond of the boy, having rescued him from an abusive father the year prior.  Tarren was a clumsy and frail-looking lad, but he had dogged Sandor’s heels ever since, practically worshiping his brusque, aging lord.  He was nearly as devastated by the loss of his savior as he was by losing his lady’s favor.  The night they had laid Sandor in his tomb, Tarren had drug Sandor’s long sword through the great hall and presented it to Arya, begging her to kill him.

Arya had risen slowly from her place at the high table, her face fixed in an inscrutable mask.  Jon had grabbed her sleeve, but she ripped her mail savagely from his grip and paced slowly around the table.  Every noble house in the North and many from the Westerlands and Crownlands were assembled for Lord Clegane’s funeral, but the heels of Arya’s boots snapped hollowly through the silent hall as she descended the dais.  No one dared breathe.  All valued their own lives too much to try to stop her.

Towering over the sobbing squire, Arya held out her hand, and Tarren placed the leather-wrapped hilt of Sandor Clegane’s sword into her palm.  Arya unsheathed the sword and examined its edge.

“I cannot number the men my husband cut through to get to me with this sword.  The Many Faced God sent him back to me twice when I thought he was lost.”  Arya’s chest rose and fell rapidly beneath the hound and direwolf worked into the breast of her black brigadine.  She advanced slowly on Tarren.  “The Lannister cunts couldn’t take him from me.  The fucking Mountain couldn’t take him from me.  The dead couldn’t take him from me.”  She dropped her cold eyes to the boy, and he flinched as though she had struck him.  “Not in a thousand years could you ever be enough to take Sandor Clegane from me.” 

Tarren knelt at her feet, pressing his face hard into the cold, damp flagstones.  He tore away the filthy stock around his throat so that the back of his neck was bared for all to see.  Though he tried to contain them, his whimpers echoed off the floor and through the hall. 

Arya glanced down at Tarren.  “The Many Faced God gave Sandor Clegane to me, and only the Many Faced God could take him back.”

Tarren looked up at her, his eyes streaming.  “I loved him, milady.  I’d have given my life for what he did for me.”

Arya’s façade cracked, but only for an instant, and a single tear crawled down her cheek.  “So did I, Tarren, but when the Many Faced God has spoken your name, it cannot be unspoken.”  Arya took a deep breath and blew it out, and every man and woman in the hall sighed in deepest relief.  “It was his hope that you would someday join our Black Riders as a man at arms.  I hope to the old gods and the new that you are better with a blade than a bow.”

In the two years since, Arya had withdrawn from the life of the castle.  She spent hours, and sometimes days, wandering and hunting with Nymeria.  Mysteriously, the direwolf had returned only days after Sandor’s death, and would always be waiting for Arya when she decided that she needed the peace she found only on the moors.  Arya would eventually return, sometimes carrying a small doe over her shoulders, and she would be herself again for a time, smiling through stories of her exploits with her husband in her youth, practicing at the blade and bow with her grandchildren, and sitting in judgment at the head of the hall.  Inevitably, though, within weeks or months, her eyes would darken with the weight of her grief, and she would be gone again. 

Only weeks ago, Eddard had come upon his mother, lingering in the great hall and stroking her hand lovingly across Sandor’s great sword.  In her other hand, she held a whetstone and cloth.  She glanced up at him, and smiled tremulously. 

Laying her hand against Eddard’s cheek, the same side that had been destroyed on his father’s face, Arya murmured, “You really are the image of your father . . . so handsome.  He was so proud of you.”  She had raised herself on her toes and kissed him softly on the lips.  “I think I’ll walk in the godswood tonight.” 

A cold stone had dropped into Eddard’s stomach as he had released his mother’s fingers.  He watched her lithe form retreat, wondering if he should have said something, if he should have stopped her.  Arya didn’t return for over a month, and when she did, it was with such advanced pneumonia that she could barely stand, little lone walk.  Even now, he wondered if his mother had dragged herself back to the Dreadfort through sheer stubbornness or if the direwolf had carried her.  Either were equally possible.  Not even her Many Faced God would have been able to prevent Lady Arya Clegane from finding her way back to her beloved’s side.

It was Termynd, Eddard’s youngest sister, who finally found Arya.  Termynd seemed to have a second sense where their mother was concerned, and she found Arya curled at the foot of their father’s tomb, shivering convulsively beneath sopping, ice-encrusted leathers. 

When Eddard scooped her up and carried her upstairs, Arya wound her fingers into his hair and murmured softly into his neck, “Sandor . . . the fuck have you been?  I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Eddard pressed his cheek against his mother’s scorching forehead.  “It’s Eddard—“

“I know, Sandor.”  She patted Eddard’s cheek and rubbed his bearded jaw consolingly.  “You couldn’t have saved father any more than you could have saved Micah.  That little cunt Joffrey would have put every one of us to the sword if he could have.”  Arya snuggled deeper into her son’s neck and murmured in a shuddering wheeze, “I forgive you, love.”

Arya languished on the edge of her fever for a fortnight, rarely lucid.  When Visenya sat with her, Arya was certain that it was Sansa who towered over her.  Termynd, with her wild red-gold curls, Arya mistook for their Uncle Rickon.  Sandor Clegane had left his stamp heavy on his sons, and in her delirium, Arya could distinguish none of them from her late husband, though she paused in confusion every time she looked into Benjen’s grey eyes.  Laughably, when their frail Aunt Sansa finally arrived in a carriage from Winterfell, Arya mistook her first for Old Nan, and then for her despised septa.

From beneath heavy brows, Eddard watched as Sario bore their mother to the pyre.  Sario alone of his siblings had fully mastered the arts of the Many Faced God, and he alone could bear to ease their mother into the arms of their god.  Arya’s breaths were labored now, and it seemed as though an eternity passed between each one.  She had been too weak for days to lift her head and had refused to drink, but when Sario laid Arya beside Sandor, she sought her husband’s cold, stiff fingers with her own.  Sario held a long, thin vial to Arya’s lips, and she eagerly sipped at its contents.  Sario held his mother’s fingers, and after a few words, he helped her to clasp her trembling hand around Sandor’s mailed arm.

When Sario joined them, Eddard nodded his thanks.  “How long?”

Sario frowned and shook his head.  “She was so weak, the Strangler took her almost immediately.  She’s where she’s meant to be.  She’s home with her family and the Many Faced God has reunited her with her beloved.”

“It’s not right.”  Visenya angrily slapped a fugitive tear away.  “She was strong and healthy a month ago.  This isn’t what they would have wanted.  Father hated fire!  We buried him for a reason!”

Benjen turned his grey Stark eyes on his sister and glowered at her from beneath heavy Clegane brows.  “Aye!  We buried him for a reason—so that he could wait for this very day.  It is what she wanted.  It’s what they both wanted.  Father told me once . . .  he said . . .” 

Nearly overcome, he took a deep breath.  Benjen had been closest to Sandor, having taken up their father’s place as master of arms of the Dreadfort and fighting through several campaigns at his side while Eddard had been sent to Dragonstone to be schooled under Maester Sam.  He clamped his mouth shut and breathed heavily through his nose while he recalled himself.  Benjen had worshipped Arya as a paragon nearly as much as Sandor had.  He had scoured the moors for his mother for weeks and blamed himself bitterly for failing to find her.

Taking another breath, Benjen continued, “He burned for her for the better half of his life.  On the day mother consented to have him, father promised her that if she’d love him, they’d have to burn them together because he’d never leave her . . .”  He shook his heavy head and glared at his sister.  “You didn’t know either of them at all if you think she’d leave this world without him.”

Benjen glared at Lyanna and jerked his head angrily.  Lyanna nodded and lit the pyre.  The flames licked higher and higher, wrapping around the still forms of Arya and Sandor Clegane, nearly reaching the bloodied weirwood leaves above them.

With a trembling lip, Visenya asked plaintively, “What will we do now?”  She wiped away another tear and laughed shakily, “The Hound and his wolf bitch are both gone . . .”

Eddard raised his chin defiantly.  “Aye, but the pack survives.  Come.  There’s work to be done, and neither of them would have us standing around waiting for summer.”

Eddard led Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane’s children out of same godswood that had witnessed their union.  The sun set bloody, and their pyre burned long into the night.  Eddard drank deep into his cups, watching the conflagration exhaust itself from the window of his chambers.  In the small hours, he fell drunkenly into his wife’s arms, hoping to fuck away his sorrow.

In the morning, Termynd and Sario returned to the godswood with a cask.  From within the cask, Termynd produced one of Sandor’s old cloaks that Arya never seemed to be able to relinquish.  The heavy green cloth was tattered and frayed, stained in multiple places with what was unmistakably blood.  In her melancholy, Arya would often draw it around herself and brood for hours into the fire.  Termynd pressed it to her face.  Tears pricked her eyes when Sandor’s earthy aroma, horse and leather and ale, steel and blood and sweat, diffused into her beneath the lighter notes of her mother’s scent, pine and snow, fresh bread and beeswax.  Termynd spread the cloak inside the cask and placed Arya’s smoldering bones upon it. 

Termynd paused, holding one of Arya’s ribs in her hand, and stroked her thumb lovingly over it.  It was still warm from the burning.  “I remember the last time they sparred.”

Sario looked up with interest.  “Aye?”

It was taking longer for Sario to retrieve their father’s bones as he painstakingly laid aside what remained of Sandor’s mail and armor to find every sliver. 

Termynd nodded.  “Mmm hmm.  She cut him . . . tore right through his hauberk beneath his pauldron.  Mother stopped at once, and father just pulled open the hole in his mail and glanced inside.  He said . . .”  Termynd smiled at the memory and laughed breathily.  “He said, ‘That one’s gonna cost you, wolf bitch.’”

Sario pulled the cask closer so he could begin depositing Sandor’s bones within.  He made no effort at all to separate Sandor’s bones from Arya’s.  He grinned broadly.  “When I was a wee lad, I could never quite figure out if mother’s given name was ‘wolf bitch’ or ‘Arya’.  It was finally Aunt Gilly that set me straight, and Gods, she beat my arse raw after she heard me refer to my mother as ‘wolf bitch’.”

Termynd laughed.  “Aye, but when he used her name, it sounded like all the good things in the world were wrapped up in that one word.”

Sario smiled sadly.  “Aye.  So did he make her pay?”

“Hmm?”  Termynd looked up blankly, having lost the thread of her story.  “Oh!  Aye!  He laid into her like he had no mercy at all, and she grinned like it was the finest treat she could imagine, spinning and ducking every time he slashed at her.  She kept her blade up against her spine the way she liked to, and you could tell he saw red!  Everything stopped in the courtyard, and everyone else just got out of the way.  He chased her from one end of the courtyard to the other until he finally got her pinned against one of those big oaken beams next to the targets at the end of the yard.  Gods, how they both laughed!  He tore her blade out of her hand,” Termynd flicked her wrist, swinging the bone gracefully through the crisp air, “and threw it aside, and kissed her like she was a blushing maiden fresh as the snow.”

“Did she hit him?”

Termynd smirked.  “No, but she laughed and wriggled and tried to get that Valyrian dagger of hers against his belly.  He tossed it aside too and scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder like sack of grain.  She laughed and laughed and beat against his back with her tiny little fists.”  Termynd balled her own enormous hands, and beat them against the air.  “She told him to put her down and go to the maester to get stitched up, but he told her she made the mess, she could damn well stitch him back up herself when he was done with her.”

They laughed heartily.  These little skirmishes had played out so frequently between their parents that Termynd and Sario could imagine the scene with perfect clarity. 

Termynd took a deep breath of icy air.  “He hauled her back to their room, and she shrieked for him to put her down the whole way.  At one point, he must have slapped her across the rump with the flat of his blade, because she started threatening him.  Gods, there wasn’t a corner of the keep where you couldn’t hear her cursing him.  Called him ‘the worst shit in the Seven Kingdoms’, and he just answered, ‘Aye, well, you shouldn’t have married me then’.  We didn’t see them again until dinner, and when they finally came down, I remember they both just glowed.  He made her come down in a dress that night to make up for cutting him, and she made him dance with her to make up for the dress.”

Termynd wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.

“You and Kaarth have that.”

Termynd snorted.  “Aye, we have that.  I thought father would kill Uncle Jon for bringing Thenns inside our walls, but when he found out I’d let one bed me . . .”  She grimaced  “ . . . if mother hadn’t stood between us and father, I think he’d have flayed us both.”

Sario folded what could be salvaged of Sandor’s hauberk and began piling together the singed plate.  “I think he came to like Kaarth in the end.”

“Aye, but it took two babes and a campaign against the Ironborn rebels before father made peace with it.  You remember the night he and Kaarth came back from Pike, and they’d lost their horses gambling at the tavern, and they stumbled through the gates leaning on one another completely pissed and singing?”

Sario snorted.  “Gods, yes.  Father couldn’t sing to save his life.  They woke up the entire fucking household they were making such a racket.  I remember mother was so furious, she made him sleep in the stable where the horse should have been.”

“Those were good times.”  Termynd scooped up their mother’s and father’s comingled ashes and deposited them into the cask one handful at a time.  “We won’t see their like again in this life.”

Having reclaimed as much of their parents as they could for the crypt, Termynd commented softly, “I guess now we know why mother never let us build her a crypt beside father.  I always thought it was because she was going to live forever,” they both grinned at the thought, “or maybe because she wanted to lie in her crypt in Winterfell with the rest of her family.”

Sario shook his head.  “She never intended to leave him.”

“No, she never did.”

Termynd turned her hands over, scarred from the practice yard just as her mother’s and fathers’ hands had been.  She rubbed them together to dislodge the oily ash from her skin.  It was everywhere, in her hair, beneath her nails, ground into the stitches of her brigadine.  She saw there the truth of the Dreadfort Clegane words, writ as clearly upon her skin as within it.

“Do you think she knew, all those years ago, when she chose our words, that this is how it would turn out for them in the end?”

“What do you mean?”

Termynd scooped up a handful of ash from the cask and let it pour from between her fingers.  “Honor from the ashes . . . a Stark and a Clegane, back to back against the rest of the world, fighting off the Many Faced God with only their wits, blades, and honor.”

Sario shrugged and stood, balancing the plate precariously.  “Who can say what the Many Faced God whispered in mother’s ear?  Who knows what exactly the Lord of Light showed father in the flames?  All that matters now is that we build upon their ashes.  They carved out a place for us here, and it’s up to us to keep it.  The pack survives.”

Termynd smiled and heaved the cask onto her hip.  “Aye, the pack survives.”


End file.
